She was one of Hollywood’s most celebrated actresses. But Audrey Hepburn had a role that few knew about: spy. And unlike the characters that she portrayed on screen, playing this part could literally mean life or death. The maddeningly private actress, who died in 1993, had dropped hints about her work with the Dutch Resistance during World War II, and now a new book puts the whole story together, providing an in-depth look at her life during the conflict. Robert Matzen, author of “Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II
The biggest surprise to many will be Hepburn’s work with the Dutch Resistance against Nazi occupation. She certainly seemed an unlikely hero. For starters, she was just 10 years old when World War II broke out. For another, her parents were infamously pro-fascist — though the realities of Nazi occupation would ultimately change her mother’s mind. Hepburn was born in Belgium in 1929 to an upper-class family. Her father worked in finance, and her mother, Baroness Ella van Heemstra, was a Dutch noblewoman. In 1935, her father walked out on the family and moved to London. The abandonment stung Hepburn. ‘My parents divorced when I was 10, and my father disappeared and all that. But we didn’t have any money at all.’
“I think it is hard sometimes for children who are dumped,” Hepburn would later say. “I don’t care who they are. It tortures a child beyond measure. They don’t know what the problem was. Children need two parents for their [emotional] equilibrium in life.” Hepburn spent a few years at a posh private school near Dover, England, but with war brewing, her mother thought it best for her and her daughter to relocate to Holland. Hepburn left England for the Netherlands in December 1939 at age 10. Despite Ella’s noble title, the family was not wealthy. The family’s grand ancestral home, where Hepburn’s grandfather lived, was rented. “My mother didn’t have a dime,” Hepburn once said. “My parents divorced when I was 10, and my father disappeared and all that. But we didn’t have any money at all.”
Hepburn’s mother took a job selling furniture, and she and her daughter settled into a modest apartment in Arnhem, a city in eastern Holland. Van Heemstra had been a supporter of the Nazis. She once wrote in a National Socialist newsletter, “Well may Adolf Hitler be proud of the rebirth of this great country and of the rejuvenation of the German spirit.” She and her husband had even met privately with the Fuehrer in Munich in 1935. Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. Troops surged over the border, quickly occupying towns and villages. Almost overnight, public signs were switched to German and swastika flags began flying.