While Minco’s earlier works are characterized by her sober, reserved way of using words and emotions, she gradually allowed herself a less restrained style to write about the Holocaust. Awarded the Vijverberg Prize in 1958, the novel was subsequently translated into several languages and is still a popular work, particularly among secondary school pupils. The “little chronicle,” as the subtitle calls it, achieved success both nationwide and abroad, selling 400,000 copies in the Netherlands alone. In a painful, concise way the work narrates the story of a young girl during World War II. In 1957, a year after the birth of her second daughter, Jessica, Minco made her literary debut with the short novel Het bittere kruid, translated into English as Bitter Herbs. Her youth and her experiences during the war inspired her to start writing novels and formed the leitmotif in all her books. During the early 1950s she published short stories in various magazines and newspapers. Minco and Bert Voeten were married in August 1945, soon after the liberation. They named the girl after Minco’s sister Bettie, who, like the other members of Minco’s family, did not survive the Holocaust. In December 1944 their first child was born. In this home, later portrayed in her novel Het lege huis (An Empty House), Bert Voeten soon joined her. Towards the end of the war Minco moved into an empty house in Amsterdam, together with a group of artists and students. While in hiding, she began using the name Marga, which she continued to use after the war. When Minco and her parents were picked up to be deported from their home, she escaped through the back door, bleached her hair, and went into hiding, using a forged identity card. Minco’s sister Bettie was arrested in Amsterdam during one of the first roundups her brother was arrested on his way to a place of hiding. Minco’s family, who soon joined her in Amsterdam, was forced to move to the Jewish quarter. Dismissed from her post, she left Breda, eventually reaching Amsterdam, where she gave drawing lessons at a Jewish elementary school. In 1940, immediately after the capitulation of the Netherlands, Minco was affected by Dutch citizens’ collaboration with the German occupiers to exclude Jews from public life. Voeten was not Jewish and the relationship did not meet with much enthusiasm from Minco’s parents. During this time she became acquainted with the Dutch poet and translator Bert Voeten (1918–1992). In 1938, Marga Minco began work at the local newspaper the Bredase Courant, first reporting on films and eventually becoming a member of the editorial staff. Afraid of running into classmates on the street, she dreaded the moment of leaving the synagogue on Saturdays, but at the same time enjoyed the sound of her name uttered in Hebrew when her father was summoned to distribute honors to the congregants. She often wondered what made her different from the other, non-Jewish, children and wished to be as inconspicuous as they. The fact that Minco grew up in a predominantly Catholic city and attended a girls’ public school in Breda occasionally led her to dislike Jewish ceremonies and laws. Minco’s parents, who married in 1914, remained enamored throughout their lives. Minco’s mother Grietje Minco-van Hoorn (‘t Zandt July 4, 1889–Sobibor May 7, 1943) was trained as a teacher. Her pious father Salomon (Oldenzaal September 17, 1887–Sobibor May 7, 1943) held the position of parnas (warden) in the local Jewish community and probably made a living as a salesman. Born Sara Minco on March 31, 1920, in the village of Ginneken in the southwest of the Netherlands, she moved as a young girl to Breda, a town near her birthplace, together with her parents, her brother David (Oldenzaal May 23, 1915–Warsaw January 31, 1944), and her sister Bettie (Ginneken February 1, 1919–Auschwitz September 30, 1942). The outstanding features of the writings of Dutch author Marga Minco are an economical use of words and an all-out effort to convey the experiences of the Holocaust.
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