The Quest for Freedom: Belgian Resistance in World War II

A young secretary in occupied Antwerp during WW II, Files didn't even inform her father (who was also her boss) when she joined the Belgian Resistance. A staunch patriot, Files assembled bombs in her living room, hid downed Allied airmen, and slipped propaganda into the letterboxes of buildings that housed the German invaders. Arrested and imprisoned, she bravely survived whipping and interrogation at the hands of the Nazis before she was freed upon the liberation of Belgium. Files offers dramatic details of daily life (e.g., sugar, a rationed food item, was an ingredient in incendiary bombs), but her account is too personal to tell a broad story of the Resistance, much less to put into perspective the tensions within occupied Belgium. Though heartfelt, the book is burdened with breathless writing, dotted with exclamation points and cliches. Files, who moved to the U.S. after the war, relates in the last chapter how, on the television show This Is Your Life in 1955, she was reunited with some fliers she had aided. The book may find an audience among WW II buffs. Photos not seen by PW. (Jan.)