On May 10, 1940, 20-year-old Diet Eman woke to what sounded like someone beating a rug with a mattenklopper (rug beater). But she suddenly realized that it was the middle of the night and that the “pop-pop-pop” sound was coming much too fast to be a Dutch housewife doing her chores.

Diet ran to join her father and mother, who were already standing outside in the front of their house. In the night sky they could see an airplane battle. They ran back into the house and turned on the radio. It was true: Hitler had invaded the Netherlands, only a few hours after promising over Dutch radio that he wouldn’t. They were at war with Nazi Germany.

In spite of the danger, the next day Diet decided to bicycle to work at the bank as usual. She was surprised when she was stopped on the street by a Dutch policeman, who ordered her to slowly speak the words "Scheveningen" and "schapenscheerder." The Dutch police were trying to weed out Germans posing as Dutch who most likely would not be able to pronounce those Dutch words.

But no matter how many phony Dutchmen the police were able to find, the Germans kept coming. After five days of defensive fighting, and after the city of Rotterdam was bombed to the ground, the Netherlands surrendered to Germany.

When Diet first saw the German soldiers goose-stepping (marching in an ultramilitaristic way particular to the Nazis) into her city, The Hague, she vowed not to speak a word of German as long as the Germans remained, even though she could speak it fluently. She also stopped socializing with Dutch friends whose families were eager to entertain German soldiers in their homes, homes that were now decorated with portraits of Hitler.

But Diet wanted to do more than avoid the German language and Nazi sympathizers. She and her fiancé, Hein Sietsma, formed a Resistance group with some friends. At first, they just listened to the forbidden BBC broadcasts together and spread what they heard to as many people as they could. But when the Nazis began to enact laws against Dutch Jews, Diet’s Resistance work began in earnest.