Only the narrator’s brother shows misgivings and leaves for a last stroll as a person like all others. And as if they were just an ordinary adornment the women discuss which colour the thread should be, before they sew the treacherous stars neatly to all frocks. During her convalescence back home, her father brings the yellow Stars of David into the house in a wrapped box under his arm like a magnificent surprise. The narrator, however, notices little of it because tuberculosis confines her to a hospital bed in Utrecht for several weeks. In fact, things change with every new decree curtailing the rights of the Jewish population in the occupied country. While many are doubtful, the girl’s father is optimistic that their lives will continue as before. With others she and her family had fled from Breda in the Southern Netherlands, but the German invasion proved less atrocious than feared and they returned. In May 1940, the teenage narrator got a first taste of the Bitter Herbs that German occupation would force down her throat. Marga Minco lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The author followed up with the short stories of The Other Side ( De andere kant: 1959) and several novels, most importantly Het huis hiernaast (1965), Terugkeer (1966), An Empty House ( Een leeg huis: 1966), De dag, dat mijn zuster trouwde (1970), Meneer Frits en andere verhalen uit de vijftiger jaren (1974), The Fall ( De val: 1983), The Glass Bridge ( De glazen brug: 1986), De zon is maar een zeepbel, twaalf droomverslagen (1990), and Nagelaten dagen (1997 tr. Een kleine Kroniek: 1957) that won her several literary prizes. Her first novel was semi-autobiographical Bitter Herbs. She made her literary debut with one of the three novellas of award-winning Het adres (1957) that she brought out together with writers Ingeborg Rutgers and Auke Jelsma. Until German invasion she worked as a journalist and then went underground with false papers to pass as Christian.
Marga Minco was born Sara Menco in Ginneken, The Netherlands, in March 1920. The narrator of Bitter Herbs by Marga Minco observes the growing concern of her apparently calm family, notably her parents, as race laws are gradually implemented in the German-occupied Netherlands and deportation to the Polish concentration camps becomes a daily threat. In a modern European country like Germany people couldn’t be so barbarous as that, could they? Therefore even when their countries were annexed or occupied, many Jews lulled themselves into a false sense of security until it was too late for escape. When eye witnesses and hard facts of systematic atrocities turned up eventually – as they use to, in general –, the world was dumbfounded and reluctant to take them at face value. The horrors that alleged “enemies of the Third Reich”, most of all those with Jewish ancestors, had to endure under Nazi reign were so appalling that at the time many simply couldn’t believe rumours about them.