Mirjam Bolle was born in Amsterdam in 1917, and from 1947 has lived in Jerusalem, where she worked for successive Dutch ambassadors. In 1943, a friend hid her unsent letters to Leo; she herself took the letters written in Bergen-Belsen to Palestine. Until recently, their existence was known only to Mirjam Bolle’s closest friends and family.
(Contact, 2003, 255 pages)
In 1938, Mirjam Levie’s fiancé, Leo Bolle, left for Palestine to prepare for the young couple’s new life in the Promised Land. Mirjam remained behind in Amsterdam, where she found a job as secretary to the Committee for Jewish Refugees. After May 1940, when the Germans occupied the Netherlands, that organization was incorporated into the Netherlands Jewish Council, set up by the Nazis to intermediate between the Jewish community and their own authorities.
