Wartime diaries in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, with Nina Siegal

In conversation with Simon Kuper

In 1944, during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, the Dutch minister for education (speaking on BBC radio from London) urged citizens to "preserve your diaries and letters" as a record of the country's wartime experience. Anne Frank was just one of many diarists who heard the call. After the war, some 2000 diaries were collected and stored in a national archive. Some are now being transcribed and digitized, and Nina Siegal – an American journalist in Amsterdam – went into the archives, read and wrote about them. What was daily life really like during the war? How complicit or not were ordinary Dutch citizens? How did different people cope? What did they see and know? 

Nina Siegal is an American journalist for The New York Times who has been based in the Netherlands for 14 years. She’s also the author of two novels including The Anatomy Lesson – set in the Netherlands -- and a PhD candidate at the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture at the University of Amsterdam. She’s currently quarantined in Amsterdam. 

Simon Kuper is a columnist for the Financial Times.