In the darkest days of the war, Anna-Maria van der Vaart sheltered Allied pilots, gave refuge to persecuted Jews and participated in audacious acts of sabotage.
She survived when others didn’t, a witness to their courage and to the terrible treachery that betrayed them to the Nazis. A chance meeting with Martin Sixsmith in 2019 led to Anna-Maria telling him her story.
She spoke of the comrades with whom she had contact or whose deeds she recollected, the people she helped and others who were determined to destroy them, and a time when there were traitors in every Resistance cell.
Martin worked for the BBC as the Corporation’s correspondent in Moscow, Washington, Brussels and Warsaw from 1980 to 1997.