‘Why I write this novel’
Toby Vos (1918) is an artist and writer of, among other things, a series ‘kabouter’ (gnomes) books and columns in several magazines. She illustrated school books and published a number of short stories.
In 1944 she started with illustrated diaries, in which she captured her adventures from the beginning of the Hunger Winter until after the liberation. Those adventures were related to her work in the resistance. She was courier for the so-called Parool-group and forged identity cards and ‘Ausweise’ (German id-card during WWII). The work took place in her house in the Rozenstraat in Amsterdam.
Atria has a large collections ego-documents of women. The last decades, the appreciation of ego-documents as a historical source has increased tremendously (e.g. for study into the daily lives of ordinary men and women, social networks, the child, the effects of gender, language). Within the framework of the project ‘Heritage of the War’ of the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, all diaries about the Second World War have been digitized.