When I was growing up in the Dutch town of Leiden in the 1970s and 80s, everything looked placid yet it felt as if the second world war was still all around us. A colleague of my dad was the sole survivor of a wartime raid by his Resistance group. Our Jewish next-door neighbour had discovered only as a teenager that her father lost his first family in the gas chambers. My sixtysomething history teacher had come to Leiden as a young man, reportedly because he had to leave his hometown after having been fout (meaning “wrong”, a collaborator) under German occupation.
上世纪七八十年代,我在荷兰莱顿小镇长大。表面上一切平静,但仿佛二战的阴影依然无处不在。我父亲的一位同事,是他所在抵抗组织在战争时期一次突袭中的唯一幸存者。我们犹太裔的隔壁邻居,直到十几岁时才得知,她的父亲的第一个家庭在毒气室中遇难。我的历史老师六十多岁,年轻时来到莱顿,据说是因为他在德国占领期间被视为“fout”(意为“错误”,通敌者),不得不离开家乡。