CLAYTON, Calif., Jan. 3, 2008 — In his new memoir, "Countdown to Freedom" (published by AuthorHouse – http://www.authorhouse.com), Willem Ridder revisits a childhood dominated by the experience of the German invasion and subsequent occupation of his hometown of Rotterdam, Netherlands, during World War II. Ridder casts the eyes of a young boy on the bombings, the loss of life and property, the hiding, the killings, the starvation, the resistance movement and the countless violations of basic freedoms perpetrated by the Nazis.
"Countdown to Freedom" describes the terror experienced by the citizens of Rotterdam from the invasion on May 10, 1940, until its liberation five years later on May 8, 1945. Ridder provides a very personal account:
Although my involvement and experience was naturally restricted by my age and limited knowledge of the why, what and where, I was sufficiently aware and sometimes even involved on the periphery of events as they unfolded during those years that shook the world. There are no revelations about the major events and battles of the war but merely how these events played a role in my young life and how they affected and sometimes even directly impacted my environment.
Ridder was an eyewitness to the horrific and the surreal. He was aware of the increasing brutality of occupying forces as the war went on, and he once witnessed a reprisal killing of 20 citizens for the killing of one German. Henry, his older brother, was active in the resistance movement, and once escaped a Nazi raid by hiding between the floorboards. And of course, Ridder saw the freedoms of the Dutch people crushed, from ridiculous rules that would have been laughable had they not been so ruthlessly enforced, to an utter disregard for human life as demonstrated in the mass starvations during the winter of 1944-45. Even as a youngster, freedom was always on Ridder's mind:
Freedom was our main goal and greatest wish … It's the story of a young Dutch boy from the big port city of Rotterdam in The Netherlands whose symbols of freedom were the contrails of thousands of Allied bombers flying over Holland on their way to Germany or the lone Spitfire that one time swooped down low, rocked its wings several times, waved at us and then sped away. But it is not just Freedom for its own sake but rather what in the end the cost of that freedom was.
Ridder, born in 1930, was 10 when the Germans invaded Rotterdam and 15 when they left. He has read many books about World War II but has yet to read one in English that describes the plight of the Dutch people. "Countdown to Freedom" is his first book.
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