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Things We Couldn't Say

Following Holland's fall to Hitler's army, Diet Eman's Jewish friend Herman was told to report for transport. Upon hearing this, she and her fiance, Hein Sietsma, made the decision to risk their lives for their beliefs. Diet and Hein would later be sent to concentration camps for their acts of resistance, and Hein would indeed lose his life. Diet survived. She came to the United States and made her home in Michigan following the war, and she began to tell her story. The author James Schaap happened to be one of her listeners, and, taken by her story, offered to be her biographer. Though Diet didn't take him up on his offer right away, she did eventually call him with an invitation to come to her home. When he arrived, she presented him with a box that had been sealed for 50 years, opened only the night before. The contents of that box included the letters that Hein had sent her during the war. By Hein's words, Diet had been transported back to that time of action forced by the horror's of Hitler's ideas and blitzes. James turned on his tape recorder, asked one question, and bore witness to the story of Diet Eman, what would become Things We Couldn't SayA production of the readers theater presentation will by held at the Knight Center in Orange City this Friday and Saturday. Curtain time is 7:30 p.m.

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