Between 1935 and 1950 an enormous change took place in the Netherlands as in the rest of Europe. Recessions and unemployment everywhere. National Socialism in power in Germany, a country preparing for war. Sean Boonstra was born in the Netherlands in 1935 and enjoyed a few carefree years before the outbreak of the Second World War in 1940. In his story he describes how the Nazi regime terrorized the people in the countries they had conquered and how it turned good people and children into animals. The reality of post war and the awareness that nothing would ever be the same as it was, including close relatives and friends. Sean writes of how he contracted diseases like polio and rheumatic fever due to malnutrition and how he miraculously survived those harsh conditions. His dreams of a career in agriculture shattered by his parents who send him to work in a factory instead. Indelibly imprinted, captures the atmosphere of the time in which this story took place