Three Ordinary Girls Quotes

“At the end of July, Hitler imposed a new set of orders that stipulated there would no longer be criminal proceedings against political opponents of the Nazi regime. Instead, the Gestapo was given license to take measures into their own hands. In other words, they could simply kill suspected saboteurs and terrorists”
― Tim Brady, Three Ordinary Girls: The Remarkable Story of Three Dutch Teenagers Who Became Spies, Saboteurs, Nazi Assassins–and WWII Heroes

“I hope you’ll never do anything mean or anything against your better judgment. Stay human always and under all circumstances.”
― Tim Brady, Three Ordinary Girls: The Remarkable Story of Three Dutch Teenagers Who Became Spies, Saboteurs, Nazi Assassins–and WWII Heroes

“In the beginning these tools of fascist oppression were sublimated as Seyss-Inquart and Rauter let the Dutch people grow accustomed to the circumstances of the new regime. In keeping with the gradual assimilation of Dutch society with German values that the Nazis envisioned at the outset of the occupation, Seyss-Inquart announced that media in the Netherlands would only be subject to German guidance, rather than strict censorship. Newspapers were invited to publish an announcement that they would be free to print whatever they wished.39 Instead of overbearing Nazi control, news copy would be filtered through a government press division, which would offer “recommendations” about appropriate subject and content. The same division would soon offer a range of topics that members in a newly established Netherlands Journalists Association were encouraged to choose from. It was in this fashion that Dutch newspapers soon became dotted with stories far more sympathetic to the German way of doing things, and overt propaganda began to appear as a substitute for daily news.”
― Tim Brady, Three Ordinary Girls: The Remarkable Story of Three Dutch Teenagers Who Became Spies, Saboteurs, Nazi Assassins–and WWII Heroes

“A large section of the Dutch population remained sympathetic to fascism;”
― Tim Brady, Three Ordinary Girls: The Remarkable Story of Three Dutch Teenagers Who Became Spies, Saboteurs, Nazi Assassins–and WWII Heroes

“The Hiding Place became a bestselling memoir of those”
― Tim Brady, Three Ordinary Girls: The Remarkable Story of Three Dutch Teenagers Who Became Spies, Saboteurs, Nazi Assassins–and WWII Heroes

“Sander van der Wiel, brother to Frans, had become an active member of the cell. He brought with him a handful of others who were joining to add potential resistance fighters to what was anticipated to be a bloody end to the war. Not all of these newcomers were reliable recruits; in fact, some proved to be more interested in causing general mayhem than fighting Germans or NSB collaborators. In the middle of January, the new members headed out to the polders to confront and rob a farmer who they suspected of profiteering off the famine. In the process, they executed the man, whose name was Willem van de Zon. As it turned out, however, not only was Zon innocent of making profits off the Hunger Winter, but he had long and solid ties to the resistance. He had hidden a number of Jewish people through the course of the war and was actually giving food away during that hard winter”
― Tim Brady, Three Ordinary Girls: The Remarkable Story of Three Dutch Teenagers Who Became Spies, Saboteurs, Nazi Assassins–and WWII Heroes

“Holocaust than did the Netherlands. Of the 80,000 Jews living in Amsterdam at the start of the occupation, only 5,000 remained when liberation came. An estimated 75 percent of the Jewish population in the Netherlands was lost to the Holocaust.291 In all, 100,000 Jews were taken on trains from the country headed for camps in Germany and elsewhere.292”
― Tim Brady, Three Ordinary Girls: The Remarkable Story of Three Dutch Teenagers Who Became Spies, Saboteurs, Nazi Assassins–and WWII Heroes