Published: 12 June 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
‘AT NIGHT I DREAM of Peace’ is the collection of diaries a young Jewish girl, Carry Ulreich, wrote during World War II in the occupied Netherlands. Ulreich, who moved to Israel after the war, became Carmela Mass and died in her nineties last year, has a fascinating story to tell.
When the transports to the camps began during the war, she and her family (her parents, her older sister and her sister’s fiancé, who organized the hiding place) found refuge with a Catholic family, the Zijlmanses. Until the end of the war, the two families, who hadn’t known each other previously, lived together in a small apartment in Rotterdam.
The Zijlmans family was recognised as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 1977, but Mass only decided to publish her diaries a few years ago. The book became a best-seller in her native Netherlands in 2016 and was recently translated into Hebrew. As yet, there is no English version.
It’s no surprise that the Dutch embraced the book, which ended well and portrays the “good Holland.” But even without that, readers – particularly those in Israel – will find the book an interesting and significant document.
FULL STORY ‘Anne Frank with a happy ending’: this Dutch Jewish girl's WW2 diary is essential reading (Haaretz)
Photo: Carry Ulreich aged 9. After moving to Israel after World War II and becoming Carmela Mass, she decided to publish her wartime diaries in the last years of her life
