The sixth year’ is the revised and greatly expanded version of an earlier (2005) pseudonymous book with the same title. In the 2014 version, the fictitious elements from the earlier edition have also been removed.
The sixth year’ is the autobiographical story about the unreal and confusing world, immediately after the war, of the Jewish boy, Peter Hein, who went from hiding place to hiding place during the war without his parents.
After the liberation, in his hut on the Zydebaelen estate, he looks back on what he experienced in many hiding places during the war. Why wasn’t he allowed to keep his own name? What was wrong with his dark eyes and his black hair? Why did it have to be bleached? The first year after the war, the ‘sixth year’, is as difficult as the previous years.
His parents are strangers to him. Family and friends have disappeared, there is no money, and life has to be picked up again: not easy, not least because Aunt Cor (a mother in hiding) does not let go of Peter and even moves in with them.
