The Thirteenth Child by Mark deMeza

The Thirteenth Child – Synopsis
On 16 May 1940, the day of his seventh birthday, Hannes is excited to watch the German Army roll into Amsterdam. He is the youngest of the Kisch family, respectable, middle-class Dutch-Jewish citizens.

The Nazi’s quickly introduce regulations which marginalize the Jews, excluding them from ever more walks of Dutch life. As the Final Solution is launched, hundreds of young Jewish men are rounded up at gunpoint in Jonas Meijer Square. Henrik, Hannes’s elder brother escapes.

In the Kisch family home, parents Franck and Elizabeth endeavour to maintain a normal life. Franck, a university professor, joins the Jewish Council, but wrestles with accepting the ever-increasing horror of their situation.

Leo Blumensohn struggles to survive and support his fellow inmates at the rapidly expanding and apparently safe Jewish refugee camp of Westerbork in the Drenthe region of the country; and at the hard labour camp of Mauthausen in Austria the ‘stairs of death’ await those unfortunate enough to be transported there.
These transportations are the catalyst for Rachael, Hannes’s adult sister and Henrik to join the Dutch Resistance. Rachael meets 2 other Jews and Johan van Hulst, a Dutch Protestant, and works with them to save hundreds of babies and young children from deportation. This includes smuggling forged documents in prams, printing fake IDs, and tense escapes e.g., running with children alongside moving trams, shielded from the sight of the SS.
Henrik begins a romantic relationship with Jacoba, one of Rachael’s fellow Resistance workers, and assists the partial evacuation of a Jewish psychiatric hospital and the release of 39 prisoners from a detention centre. Finally, he takes part in the assassination of a Dutch collaborator, leading to the killing of the target’s wife. Whilst fleeing, Henrik is captured and sent to Mauthausen. At the top of the ‘stairs’, Henrik grapples with an SS soldier and falls to his death, taking the soldier with him.
Elizabeth and Hannes are smuggled to the hidden village of Vierhouten, a group of wooden huts in a dense forest sheltering around 100 Jews. Franck agrees to follow shortly afterwards. One night a Bounty Hunter (a Dutch civil servant paid a bonus by the Nazis for arresting Jews) calls at the Kisch home, steals the remainder of their money and fatally shoots Franck.

Bored, Hannes goes for a walk, but by chance is spotted by an SS soldier who is hunting in the forest. Everyone must flee, but Elizabeth falls and is badly injured. She urges Hannes to run. She is found by the SS and shot dead. Hannes escapes.

Rachael is arrested in Amsterdam, sent to Westerbork and, about to be deported, is surprisingly reunited with Hannes. The novel concludes with Rachael and Hannes, together, crammed in a cattle truck bound for Auschwitz, unaware of what awaits them.

Van Hulst survives the war, but is plagued by the thought that he could have saved ‘just one more child’ from deportation. This unknown infant would have been the thirteenth child.

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