Over seventy years after its composition, the dagboek/diary/journal that Georg Fröhlich kept during the closing months of the war in Europe is presented here. The surviving members of the Fröhich family—husband Georg, wife Edith (nee Nissen) and daughter Sabine—lived with Jan and Johanna Elders and their eight children in Bovenkarspel from late summer 1944 through to the liberation of the Netherlands in May 1945. The diary recounts this time from the perspective of refugees, the Fröhlichs, a.k.a. the Faessens, after years spent in hiding.

​

With transcription assistance from Wilhelmina (Willy), the eldest Elders daughter, Georg wrote the entries in Dutch with his very tidy “Deutsche Handschrift” [German handwriting]. His consistent penmanship was common for someone of his time and training. The entries in this little spiral-bound note book display both coyness and frankness: Coy to avoid directly mentioning any incriminating resistance to the occupiers, should the diary fall into the wrong hands; Frank to describe in unemotional terms the day-to-day challenges of feeding and caring those who shared House Elastick.

​

Attorney (Rechtsanwalt) Georg Fröhlich was sixty-one years of age at the war’s end in 1945. Burgemeester Jan Elders was forty-five.1 Liberation day meant that life had just been reborn for both of their families and all the survivors. Both, together with their partners in life, Edith and Johanna respectively, would go on to many other achievements before drawing their last breaths. 

​

​