A diary of war and liberation

Harm van der Wal
Harm van der Wal (© Helene Michaud)

Harm van der Wal was coming of age during the Second World War, and he kept an insightful diary of those formative and dramatic years of his life: the front-line fighting so close to his home, the tense hours in bomb shelters, the close calls. Yet he could not bring himself to read his diary again. He put it aside and got on with his life. Some sixty years later he realised, however, his generation had a need and a duty to talk and to tell the next generations of the suffering that war brings. And he opened his diary to his daughter-in-law, the mother of his grandchildren, producer Hélène Michaud.

Producer: Hélène Michaud

Broadcast: May 4, 2005