“When you read Hidden Letters, the book is going to leave a mark. It’s going to hurt down deep and leave you thinking about things long after you’ve finished the book.”
—Mel Odom, Blog Review, blogcritics.org
“Hidden Letters is a treasure revealed. . . . This is a compelling, disturbing, and heartbreaking great read.”
—Kathleen Baxter, columnist School Library Journal
“It is the most important and moving document I have ever read.”
—Professor Barbara Cole, Sand Hills Community College, NC
“For someone who was moved as he saw the Amsterdam Dockworkers’ Memorial and was humbled by a visit to Westerbork Camp, this book brings home the pathos of all who suffered in the Netherlands under Nazi oppression. It is a real contribution to our knowledge of those pitiful times.”
—Rev. Dr. John Sullivan, O.C.D. Publisher, ICS Publications (Institute of Carmelite Studies)
“Flip Slier, a young boy, writing letters to his parents, asking them to save the letters and to hide them… It was Manus de Groot who found the letters and that was the beginning of events Flip could not have foreseen, that were leading to this book…”
—Esther Denaro Maltese, Ph.D. Founder and President, The Rose and Joseph Denaro Interfaith Center for the Study of Genocide and Violence Prevention
“Personal narratives and testimony help us to piece together the stories and events of the Holocaust, whose lethal fingers reached into almost every corner of Europe….”
—Jewish Book World, Spring 2008
“Hidden Letters is an extraordinary piece of scholarship with a deeply moving personal story. The book is artfully shaped around two bundles of letters found in 1997 in the bathroom ceiling….”
— Arend A. Vander Pols, d.i.s. magazine (a quarterly publication of the Dutch International Society) Volume 40, No.2, September, 2008
“The best holocaust book I’ve ever read,and I’ve read them all.”
— Jack Polack, Chairman Emeritus, The Anne Frank Society
“Hidden Letters is a profoundly compassionate report on the tragedy that befell a young Dutch Jew and his extended family during the Holocaust…
—István Deák, Emeritus of History, Columbia University
“Much has been written about the Holocaust, but rarely has the destruction of life in a civilized country been documented with such intimacy as in these letters. They are almost unbearable to read, and yet it is essential that we do so.”
—Ian Buruma Author: Murder in Amsterdam; The Wages of Guilt
“Hidden Letters will appeal to WW2 buffs, to Holocaust buffs and to Jews. I am none of the above but I could not stop reading it and so I think it will appeal to everyone.”
—Preston Nash, KNZR Radio
“At a time when a veritable explosion of books about the Holocaust, including such primary sources as letters, diaries and memoirs are appearing more than sixty years after the event, one might assume that further studies and reminiscences would begin to replicate each other…
—Guy Stern, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Wayne State University
Director, Harry and Wanda Zekelman International Institute of the Righteous,
Holocaust Memorial Center, Farmington Hills, Michigan
“This memoir is a tribute to Philip “Flip” Slier and to the family and friends who determined that his life should not go unrecorded…
— Anita Brookner, Author, Hotel du Lac & Leaving Home
“This work is beautifully and interestingly presented, and it is the most important and most moving document I have ever read. I want to go to Vrolik Street. I want to meet Karel; can there be a better example of a friend than he?”
—Professor Barbara Cole Author: Wash Day and Anna and Natalie
“It is spectacular.”
— Rabbi Stephan L. Jacobs Professor of Religious Studies,University of Alabama Member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Comparative Genocide Studies
“Discovered hidden in a bathroom ceiling in Amsterdam in 1997, this collection of letters from Philip Flip Slier, a Dutch Jew killed in the Holocaust, displays a spirit as indomitable as that of Anne Frank’s….
—Publisher’s Weekly
“In 1997, Manus de Groot, the foreman of a demolition company, was tearing own a house along Amsterdam’s Vrolik Street when he found two bundles of letters hidden in the ceiling of the third-floor bathroom. It struck him that…
—Robert Leiter
“The enormous power of Philip “Flip” Slier’s eponymous Hidden Letters (annotated by Deborah Slier and Ian Shine, translated by Marion van Binsbergen-Pritchard, Star Bright Books, Roundhouse Group, 21.95) as he…
—Lucy Tobin
“Keeping alive the message of the Holocaust can be a formidable challenge in a world with increasing number of Holocaust deniers who seek to annihilate the Jewish people. This book…
—Hannah M. Heller