She said there was no greater evil . . . than war . . . and, how it affects the children.

 She said there was no greater evil . . . than war . . . and, how it affects the children.

After the invasion of her country, she survived bombings, starvation, even risking death.

“She witnessed executions. She saw body parts in the street after bombs tore up her neighborhood. She stemmed the bleeding of wounded soldiers and civilians until she too was covered in blood. She had guns pointed at her . . . and stood in the direct path of machine guns as they rattled away,” according to writer Robert Matzen.

“At the worst of times [she and her family] were driven to a cramped cellar and huddled there as bullets and bombs thudded into the house.”

She was just 10 years old when the war broke out.

To her family, she was known as Adriaantje or Young Audrey.

To the world, she became known as Audrey Hepburn.

“Audrey Hepburn is remembered by the world over for her beauty, elegance and damn-near mastery of the fine art of class,” according to Everything Audrey. “She was a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador before it was popular, a true humanitarian and one of the greatest actresses of all time.”

We all have different chapters in our lives, some more memorable than others, some chapters we choose to forget.

You may think you know her story, but throughout her life she chose to hide this particular part of her story.

Fortunately for us, some of that hidden chapter was recently researched again, and now we know more of her story, why she chose particular paths in her life and why she hid other parts of her early life.

The Peace Page has shared chapters of Audrey Hepburn’s life before, especially her work with UNICEF, just as it has shared other stories of actresses and entertainers who made a difference, such as Eartha Kitt, Hedy Lamarr, and Anna May Wong. For this Women’s History Month, especially for this year and this moment in time, we are sharing this chapter of Audrey Hepburn’s life.

“Where is Audrey Hepburn when we need her?,” wrote Robert Matzen, author of “Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II.” “I’m reminded of Audrey’s experiences daily now as we all get a taste of life in a wartime setting. Audrey endured World War II as a youngster in the Netherlands—11 when the Germans marched into the Netherlands in 1940, and 15 the day Canadians liberated her town in 1945.”

“The actress grew up in Holland during Germany’s five-year occupation of the country,” according to writer Liz McNeil in People. “She rarely spoke about the darkness of those years, where she . . . nearly starved to death due to food shortages, and lost her beloved uncle, Otto van Limburg Stirum. He was a magistrate who did not support the Nazi regime, and was then executed on August 15, 1942.”

“Leading up to that brutally cold winter, as Germany tightened its grip on Holland, Hepburn and her family were often forced to live in the cellar for days and weeks at a time due to bombing overhead. And food became more and more scarce.” 

“‘Dutch Girl’ is based on Matzen’s visits to the Netherlands, where he accessed hard-to-get information in archives, and interviewed people with wartime memories of Hepburn, gaining a new understanding of the star’s own statements about her wartime past,” according to writer Rich Tenorio. “Hepburn’s son Luca Dotti wrote the foreword, and shared previously-unseen photographs, documents and mementos.” 

“Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. Troops surged over the border, quickly occupying towns and villages,” according to writer Reed Tucker. “Almost overnight, public signs were switched to German and swastika flags began flying.”

“Audrey spent some rough World War II years in the town of Velp, which abuts the eastern border of Arnhem close to the border with Germany,” wrote Matzen. “There she faced first psychological stress and atrocities at the hands of the Nazis, followed by bombs and bullets as the full fury of combat hit Velp. Then came the Hunger Winter of 1944-45.”

“In Velp she learned how it felt to be caught in the middle of a war waged by adults. In Velp she first cared for children who had been traumatized by bullets and bombs. In Velp she suffered the rumblings of an empty belly and faced the prospect of dying of malnutrition. In Velp she ventured out to help the Resistance not knowing if she would ever again return home.”

In one incident, “Audrey passed close by this evil in downtown Velp one day, and what she heard stayed with her for the remainder of her life,” wrote Matzen in Time. “She was walking with her mother along Hoofdstraat past the Hotel Naeff [when] she heard “the most awful sounds coming out of this building. It was then explained to me [by my mother] that it was a prison and perhaps people were being tortured. Those are things you don’t forget.”

“The cruelties of war were everywhere. Hepburn in 1991 recalled [another incident] witnessing a train being filled with Jews.”

“I remember, very sharply, one little boy standing with his parents on the platform, very pale, very blond, wearing a coat that was much too big for him, and he stepped on the train,” she told a reporter. “I was a child observing a child … Then I realized what would have happened to him.”

This early chapter in her life would influence not only her work with UNICEF as an ambassador who aided children affected by war, but also her future work as an actress.

“Invited in 1958 to play the role of the most famous Dutch Holocaust victim in the film version of ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’, Hepburn found the subject too close to home and turned it down, although she met with Frank’s Holocaust survivor father, Otto Frank,” according to The Times of Israel.

“I believe Audrey felt survivor’s guilt,” Matzen said. “She survived. Anne Frank did not.”

“While Hepburn never met Frank, they lived parallel lives. They were the same age, lived just 60 miles apart, and suffered the horror of the German occupation of Holland.”

According to Matzen, when the star read Frank’s ‘The Diary of a Young Girl’, Hepburn was devastated. “I’ve marked where she said ‘Five hostages shot today,’ said Hepburn years later. “That was the day my uncle was shot. And in this child’s words, I was reading what was inside me and still there. This child who was locked up . . . had written a full report of everything I’d experienced and felt.”

Hepburn was so traumatized she was unable to accept the role. “I was so destroyed by it again, that I said I couldn’t deal with it,” Hepburn later said. “It’s a little bit as if this had happened to my sister . . . in a way she was my soul sister.”

“Hepburn also was affected by the larger tragedies that befell her nation, and she displayed heroism on behalf of individuals in danger,” wrote Tenorio. 

“She risked her life secretly working for the Dutch Resistance to help fight the Nazis,” wrote McNeil.

Hepburn “helped raise money for the Resistance by participating in illegal musical and dance performances, called “black evenings,” due to the windows that were blacked out, says Matzen, “so the Germans would not realize what was going on. Afterwards money was collected and given to the Dutch Underground.”

“Audrey the optimist took everything negative that happened to her in the war and flipped it into a positive,” wrote Matzen. “As a 15 year old she had almost starved, so she became the tireless champion of starving children. The Germans had been cruel, so she promoted love. She had witnessed war up close, so she preached 

“She had always been affected by children suffering in wars started by adults,” Matzen explained. “It is part of the book’s powerful message.”

“There were times reading this book that I was crying,” says her son, Dotti. “I imagine how brave she was, working for the Resistance and also how easily she could have died from lack of food, or from a bomb or a bullet.”

“My mother always repeated there was no greater evil than war,” says Dotti. “Because it affects the children.