Things We Couldn't Say Reviews

• Every high school student in America should read this book

  
  By on 1999-04-21
  Diet's story is not one just of the events during the Second World War, but a timeless story of the power of good over evil. She brings hope to the hearts of us all through her enormous capacity to love her fellow man enough to sacrifice every relationship she held dear. If you have an ounce of compassion you can not help but be touched by Diet's book. You will ask yourself over and over again, "Could I have done what she did? Lost what she lost and still held on to hope?" I recommend this book to everyone I know!
  
  

• God's Hands and Heart

  
  By A1EJUL2O4GWYWD on 2000-09-27
  Wow - what a book. Diet and her friends were certainly God's hands and heart in their work. They loved so big - so courageously. I would so like to meet her. It would be an honor to be able to talk with her about how she lived her faith out. To her it is so real.

  Reading her book has made me wonder what she thinks - or what we think - of our "convenient lifestyle" as Americans. And how we treat each other. Diet risked her life many times for her neighbors - and I do not even know all of the people in my small neighborhood.

  Thank you Diet for your writing your book. I am sure it was a struggle to put all of the stories back together in your mind and then write them out. Yeah for you.

  Christ's peace,

  Paula Gallagher Carlsbad CA
  
  

• MOVING STORY!

  
  By A2AYX5WCTACS2Q on 1999-12-26
  I loved this book, it is so inspiring and really makes you count your blessings, that we aren't at war now, and for some of us have never had to live through a war! We can thank and praise God that He has been faithful, and also was faithful to Diet Eman and many others, He never left them. I recommend this book true story) to anyone.
  
  

• Good Read

  
  By A34Y2TFOKCT23B on 2001-02-25
  If you liked "The Hiding Place" you will also enjoy this book. The book has elements that "The Hiding Place" does not, such as the love story between the author and her fiance.

  If you like accounts of WW2, or if you want a moving story, this is the book for you.
  
  

• exceptional book in several ways

  
  By A3AITGXFGVM1T2 on 2005-12-31
  Diet Eman was a young dutch woman during WWII in Holland. Her and her fiance were involved in the Dutch resistance movement. They helped Jews find homes/families to hide with in the Dutch countryside. This was a huge undertaking that required much teamwork. (For instance, the families that took in Jews would need extra ration cards to buy more food. Extra ration cards would have to be obtained and delivered to these families.) Diet literally rode hundreds (probably thousands!!) of miles on bicycles during the war coordinating this effort to keep Jews hidden in the countryside.
  
  As Diet tells her story, there are frequent excerpts from the personal diary she kept during the war. And excerpts from postal letters she either sent or received during the war. This helped give the book a very "real" feel...You experience her first hand emotions and thoughts as these events were actually taking place.
  
  Diet had a strong Christian faith. Her spiritual insights are deep and powerful. Her faith sustained her during this troubling time in history.
  
  Diet was eventually caught by the Nazis and spent time in a jail and a concentration camp. She was briefly at the same camp as Corrie TenBoom, author of The Hiding Place. Diet survived, but her beloved fiance died in a concentration camp.
  
  I highly recommend this book. Not only is it an exceptional historical account of life during WWII, but the spiritual (Christian) thoughts in it are very profound. While Diet was living through this horrific time period, the spiritual thoughts she recorded in her diary are incredibly mature. She was so young (early 20's) but was advanced beyond her years with spiritual perception. Her faith influenced her every thought.
  
  
  
  
• Things We Couldn't Say by Diet Eman
  By A2HC1RTJKWMBOW on 2001-06-04
  Focus on the Family radio station featured Diet Eman April 2001, during one of my drives to work. I heard a portion of the most gripping account of how Diet was arrested (with undiscovered stolen ration cards for hidden Jews and false ID cards for downed allied piolots). There she sat in a train station surrounded by six German soldiers, praying very hard for the grace of God to help her to get rid of those papers hidden in her bra, a sure death sentence. To distract one guard, or perhaps two, would be possible, but how would all six be distracted at the same time so that she could get rid of that envelope? I couldn't tune in to the radio the following day. I was left with the most exciting alternative, to read the book. Diet's story will dwarf anyone's troubles and serves to inspire how faith and reliance on God can manage the seemingly impossible while sculpting one's heart with a strong dose of humility.
  
  
• Finding G-d When We've Lost Everything Else
  By AO4V8V5Z6LC1P on 2004-10-24
  This book is an inspiration and I belive that Deit is one of the great role models we should have our kids look up to. I am an Orthodox Jew living in Israel. We are all G-d's children (we all stem from Noah)and Deit's love for mankind and her faith in G-d is an inspiration to anyone who reads her story. Sometimes we have to lose almost everything before we can make room for G-d. I just hope mankind never has to come to this point again, and that we find G-d and G-d's love and goodness through appreciation for the things we already have been blessed with - and not through pain and suffering. I am the daughter of a holocaust survivor from Poland and yet today we are fighting another evil. I pray that Westerners don't get too soft in their cushy and easy lives to fight the evil we face today through terrorism. Although life can be a challenge for anyone, whether they enjoy a relatively easy life or not, we need to find the strength of heroes like Deit, and not tolerate the hatred and intolerance coming out of the east. We need to realize just how easy, and how good we really have it today, yet have that strength within us to eradicate the terrorism we and others face today. This book makes one count their blessings. Thank you Deit and all others like you, Jews and Gentiles who had the stamina, bravery, and blessing to see to the defeat of the evil Nazi empire. May we see the defeat of the terrorists around the world today.
  
  
• John 15:13
  By A3C4R0SAR8UPXI on 2002-03-27
  I cannot emphasize, underline, or highlight ENOUGH how much you need to read this must-read of must-reads! This is the best story I've ever read and, hence, the best book I've encountered in my 22 years. To grasp true commitment to Christ and, therefore, to mankind is to read Hein and Diet's sacrificial walk of love. I would daresay that, granted the wish to meet one deceased person, Hein might very well be the one. "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." (Jn 15:13). Hein and Diet captured this verse's message and fearlessly followed...inspiration epitomized.
  
  
• A Christian at War
  By AEIUTHFEERAD on 2006-09-28
  I have read more than 75 books of this genre depicting this period of history. "What would I have done under the same circumstances?" That is the question I am always asking of myself whilst reading these stories. This is the story of a group of people with the courage of their convictions...Diet's story is inspiring and touching. It illustrates perfectly that the power of prayer is undeniable and when 'all one can do is pray' one has done everything.
  
  
• I had the chance to meet her personally.
  By A9YNS3LQNGPCV on 2004-01-27
  I was a missionary in Honduras in 1988, helping Doctors translate in Spanish. We were some 60 miles north of the capital city, sitting around a fire. Diet's story lasted about 2.5 hours long for us. We were engrossed with her story.

  Afterwards, I pulled her aside and told her that she needed to write this down before she was physically unable to do so. She started to give me excuses why this couldn't happen from not being a good writer to other writers (ghost writers) not conveying her sentiment.

  I Praise God that she finally took the time to get her story down! Thank you DIET!
  
  

• Things she did say
  By A2TQ49GULDH6ZP on 2004-02-13
  Diet Eman's book won me over more than any book I've read in the past few years. At only 23, she helped organize a Dutch resistance movement that hid hundreds of Jews and supplied them with fake ration cards throughout World War II. She suffered incredibly to see justice done, even being thrown into a concentration camp for a year. Yet through her tragedies, through the death of her fiance, and the suffering she experienced knowing that her friends were being tortured and killed, her faith in God rarely wavered. Her miraculous answers to prayer are inspiring and moving. She says she was reluctant to write the book because she didn't want to bring up the memories of the horror she lived through in war-torn Holland. I am so glad that James Schaap offered to organize her story into this book. It has strengthened my own faith in God enormously.
  
  
• Inspirational
  By APTHBQBGMFVEE on 1999-12-19
  The sacrifices Diet and her friends made to assist others is inspirational - all made possible by their faith and trust in the Lord.
  
  
• Beautiful and touching story
  By on 2000-10-04
  A wonderful, true story that you will never forget. A definite must read!!
  
  
• Excellant Book - well worth reading !!!
  By on 1999-04-02
  For the reader in Israel who wanted to contact the author - Diet Eman - How can one give you the contact information if you don't leave any way to contact you ???

  I would guess that if she is still alive she can be contacted through her publisher:

  Wm. B. Eerdman's 231 Jefferson Avenue SE Grand Rapids MI 49503-4569 USA (616) 451-0763

  or if you know (or can find out - it might be in her book) the city in which she lives - look in the phone book!!!
  
  

• An account of valour
  By A1G9FX1KV45N41 on 2007-05-26
  The true story of true Christians, and Dutch patriots, Diet Eman and Hein Sietsma, and their courageous risk of everything to resist Nazi tyranny and hide thousands of Dutch Jews.
  True Christians always love the Jewish people and Israel, and true nationalists are opposed to both Communism and Nazism, both the antithesis of national self-determination.
  Diet recounts her own life, and experiences and what she saw and heard, as well as her deep faith in G-D, that guided her in all she did and thought.
  Diet recounts her experiences in Scheveningen prison, where she describes how Jewish families, who were caught in hiding, were hauled into the prison, mothers, fathers and children: 'On the nights the guards brought Jews in, we always heard the children crying all through that place. It was bad enough for us to have to suffer through a place, like Scheveningen, but it was terrible to hear those poor innocent children crying.'
  It is up to true Christians and righteous gentiles to stand by the State of Israel today, in the struggle for her survival and that of her children, against the monstrous Islamic-extreme leftist hate machine.
  
  

• The Reckoning: Remembering The Dutch Resistance
• The Shack
• In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer
• East Wind
• The Hiding Place (Deluxe Christian Classics)