Jan Makkreel shares how Nazi family ties led to his internment “Under the Shadow of The Swastika”

Ghostwritten by Robert Graef, the coming-of-age wartime memoir “Under the Shadow of The Swastika” (ReadersMagnet; 2019) talks about musician and business-owner Jan Makkreel’s teenage years in The Netherlands during the Nazi occupation. The key themes of the book are family ties and the aftermath of the war.
 
Much of the book deals with the predicament of Makkreel and his family during and after World War II in The Netherlands. It also tackles how the war brought out the good and bad in people, especially after the war when the country was swept up in the frenzy of political cleansing that lumped the innocents with the war criminals.
 
The teenage Makkreel and his parents were among the innocent people caught up in the frenzy. Their only crime was having family members associated with the Nazis. An uncle, his mother’s brother, was an SS captain and an older sister, having fallen in love with a German soldier, defected to Germany.
 
“No doubt our watchful neighbors had compiled a dossier on the Makkreel family that planted us firmly in the Nazi camp,” said Makkreel.
 
Having an SS captain for an uncle seemed to have invalidated Makkreel’s contribution to the resistance. He had been driven about town in his uncle’s staff car a number of times, though he always ducked down to avoid being recognized. One time, though, he asked for his uncle help in freeing two paternal relatives from a concentration camp.
 
It pained Makkreel to be labeled a traitor and a Nazi collaborator. Even after his release and though proven innocent, his neighbors still suspect him. “Neighbors up and down my street who saw me hauled away weren’t fully convinced,” said Makkreel, “nor were my playmates and classmates who repeatedly saw me in the company of an SS captain.

“I have come to realize that the complex of tensions and pressure that tore at my family and neighborhood and nation would have been more than enough to unsettle me had I been an adult at the time.”
 
“What matters,” said Graef, “is that the people of Rotterdam and Zeist did judge, finding that Jan’s association with his uncle and his sister’s defection were evidence of collaboration and deserving of incarceration with convicted Dutch Nazis.”
 
Read more of Jan Makkreel’s powerful wartime testimony in “Under the Shadow of The Swastika.” Order today through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Watch out for the public display of this book upcoming 2019 Beijing International Book Fair on August 21-25, 2019.
 
Under the Shadow of The Swastika
Author: Jan Makkreel (ghostwritten by Robert Graef)
Published date: January 29, 2019
Published by ReadersMagnet
Kindle price: $5.99
 
About the Author
Jan Makkreel was born on 1926 in Rotterdam, Holland and had a very happy childhood until war broke out. He and his brother had to scramble for food of any kind during the war to keep their family fed while their father worked. He also secretly helped the Jews in his neighborhood who were still hiding, which was very dangerous. After the end of the war, he and his father were interned for a year and a half at AMERSFOORT Prison Camp for alleged Nazi collaboration. They were released after being proven innocent but the neighbors were not convinced. Jan could not return to school nor gain employment. He decided to go to Canada where he and his brother began their own businesses. Over the years, he opened a string of piano stores and tuned and restored pianos.
 
 

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