Mario Escobar’s children’s house

Synopsis

A fascinating novel about the true story of three Dutch heroes who, like Oskar Schindler, decided to defy horror and saved the lives of more than six hundred Jewish children.

HUMAN GREATNESS CAN EMERGE AMONG THE RUINS OF WAR

Amsterdam, 1942. In Holland, the Nazi flag is already flying and thousands of Jews are waiting for their deportation in places like the Hollandsche Shouwburg Theatre. Professor Johan van Hulst witnesses the conditions in which Jewish children wait, frightened and without support, and is unable to remain impassive in the face of such suffering.

SAVING THE LIVES OF HUNDREDS OF CHILDREN WAS HIS LEGACY

To deal with the tragedy, she will contact Henriëtte Pimentel, the director of the nearest nursery school, and Walter Süskind, the German Jew forced to draw up the lists of deportees. Together they will design a network of passages through which they will try to save the children, while hiding from the eyes of an increasingly ruthless regime.

THIS IS HIS STORY

Through the story of a Sephardic family trying to escape their horrible fate, Mario Escobar reveals the true story of the people who saved more than six hundred children at the height of Nazi rule. This grand and moving novel pays tribute to all those heroes without weapons or flags who did not hesitate to put their lives at risk for the lives of others.

«The story of Henriëtte Pimentel’s kindergarten and the rescue of more than six hundred children in Amsterdam came to me through the life and work of Johan van Hulst, a prominent Dutch educator and politician who for decades stood out for his honesty and willingness to engage in dialogue. This politician was the young director of the Hervormde Kweekschool (HKS) in Amsterdam and every day he walked past the Hollandsche Schouwburg theatre, the place where Dutch Jews were held for deportation. Johan could have remained indifferent to what was happening before him, as did hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens, but he decided to act.»

The novel is inspired by the story of Johan van Hults, Henriëtte Pimentel and Walter Süskind, who risked their lives to save six hundred Jewish children from certain death.

The Netherlands, one of the most advanced countries in terms of rights and freedoms in the 1930s, quickly became the nation that sent the most Jews and dissidents to the gas chambers. A moving novel based on real events that rescues from oblivion one of the most moving stories of heroism of a family in the midst of Nazi terror.