Pierre de Lens, 44 cm

When I was eight years old, I learned about secrecy and that you had to watch out with it. We lived under the Japanese occupation in the former Dutch East Indies and my father was already imprisoned. But I still lived with my mother, sister and little brother in our house at the duck pond and when we did not receive lessons from my mother, we played on the streets - the schools were closed.

From time to time, Japanese soldiers came walking by and wanted to chat, in Indonesian of course. When they asked if we did not have to go to school, we lied we did not. We knew that school was forbidden.

Anne-Ruth Wertheim