“My Sister and I”: An Elaborate Literary Hoax

The fabricated diary of a young Dutch boy was intended to gain American sympathy for the British struggle agains Nazi Germany.

This article appears in: Early Fall 2012

By Sheldon Winkler During World War II, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, from her exile in London, urged her staff to find a 12-year-old Dutch boy, Dirk van der Heide. Young Dirk, who had emigrated to the United States with his nine-year-old sister Keetje, had written a short book titled My Sister and I, which was published by Harcourt, Brace and Company in New York in January 1941. A few months later the book was published in London by Faber and Faber. Dirk, who was from the southern subu