Quotes by Diet Eman

Im sorry to say it, but it was hard on me to see life continue all around.

You should not try to live without thinking and feeling, for then you are only a piece of machinery, not a human being. Even if it hurts. Even if the thing you have to think of are sad, think them through; live them through and write or tell me. Only when we completely work through our thinking and feeling do we live a full life. ~From a letter to Diet Eman from Hein Sietsma

If you dont speak, they will know you know more than youre telling them. And if they know that, theyll find a way to get what you know out of you. Believe me, theyll get everything out, Willie. Dont have any qualms about it -- make your story good and make it believable. Silence wont work! This was an expert giving me the best advice she could. From that point on, I worked hard not to remember the people I loved, to try instead to create another life, a false life...I tried to become a person concerned only with very simple things -- and scared. I tried to become the woman I needed to be in order to live.

Those women who had gone out with Germans were grabbed and treated very badly, often shaved totally bald so that everyone could see who they were. Some were taken prisoners. There had been so much suffering during the war because of the betrayal of those collaborators, so many killed and hurt because of what they had done to families, that the mood for revenge against the traitors was very high. It was not right, but it was understandable.

The worst is, I remain so stone cold. Does this war make you an alive-dead person? Is it not possible to remain yourself in this chaos? How long still?

The greatest miracle was that in the end I could actually feel pity for those men because they were so deluded: they thought they had power and really they had nothing. I will never forget it. And from that moment on Ive never really hated anymore. It all turned around when I sat there thinking what poor empty souls they were.

There I was out in the barn playing midwife to a pregnant mare. I remember sitting there, spinning yarn in the light of a little oil lamp, a city girl who knew nothing about farming, sitting on the deel beside that mother in pain, already beginning the birthing process. All around me there was darkness and perfect silence, except for the mothers pain. It was as if the war didnt exist in those hours.

(regarding what kind of day she would want to be released) If I had the opportunity to choose, I would want it to be a radiant sunshiny day! And I would love it to be a Saturday morning. Id go home and take a bath and soak and shampoo and put on clean underwear and clean clothes! And then Sunday morning I want to go to church and thank Gd for freedom -- with capital letters.

Being exhausted, yet keeping up the pursuit. (Judges 8:4) Even after what I had said of wanting out, even after that humiliation, the physical exhaustion, the deep despair I felt, those words were my new marching orders. The next morning, I swung my rucksack over my shoulders and was off again.

Life is like a film screen: pictures come, make an impression, go, and then make a place for new pictures with new impressions which obscure the previous ones. Some of those old pictures fade, but the impressions they leave will never pass away. Such an impression is the image of Hein Sietsma -- a joyful Christian who loved life so much but was still willing to give it to the great, good, and holy cause.

Darling, if I think of all I miss now, I will go crazy. I should not think of that. I only want to think of all that I still have, and then I am rich. Your spirit is always around me, in your diary, our letters, all the things you got for our household. How proud we were of that! And the nearly six years! O God, I thank you for those years. If I never had met you, I would now not have all the sorrow; but I would have missed these riches -- and do these years not abundantly balance the lonely years I face without you?

That was one other time when my whole body reacted to the fear and went out of my own control. My nerves came apart completely, and I started vomiting and vomiting. I couldnt stop. It had been such a narrow escape. I kept telling myself that I could take all of the pressure; but there were those times that my body seemed almost to shut itself down, to scream that what was happening was just too much.

It was always exciting, but it was also always dangerous. And fear takes a toll finally: when you live in danger from moment to moment, the constant tension becomes very wearying. Every step I took on the roads of Gelderland was nerve-wracking, because I was secretly carrying the very material that could turn out to be my own death warrant.

The sound of natural things was wonderful to us. In the middle of all the suffering, it seemed pure, untouched.

And here we see again that we do not decide our own lives. Dieneke, even if we wont see each other again on earth, we will never be sorry for what we did, that we took this stand.