With an introduction by Thomas HardingDuring the winter of 1945 the last dark days of World
War II stretch out in occupied Holland as the populace wait for the Allies to arrive. A Dutch
Nazi collaborator Fake Ploeg infamous for his cruelty is assassinated as he rides home on
his bicycle. His body is moved from one family's doorstep to another along the same road and
the remaining Germans retaliate by burning down the final house and killing its inhabitants.
Only their twelve-year-old son Anton survives. The Assault traces the complex repercussions of
this horrific incident on Anton's life. Determined to forget he opts for a carefully normal
existence: a prudent marriage a successful career as an anaesthesiologist and colorless
passivity. But the past keeps breaking through in relentless memories and in chance encounters
with others who were involved in the assassination and its aftermath until Anton finally
learns what really happened that night in 1945-and why. Powerful in its emotional restraint
lucid on the hardest of moral questions and fiercely moving The Assault is an excavation of
Dutch collaboration resistance and the terrible collateral damage wrought on innocent people
in times of war
