Behind the glamor of Hollywood’s greatest style icon, Audrey Hepburn, there is more than just a stunning figure and an almost touching face. The story is hidden a girl who lived in the first person one of the greatest horrors of humanity: World War II.
Audrey Hepburn’s Little Known Past
On May 4, 1929, he was born into an aristocratic family. Audrey Kathleen Ruston, or as we all know her: Audrey Hepburn. With a Dutch mother and an English father, her roots lie in Belgium.
From that moment she had no fixed residence and spent much of her childhood in England training to be a dancer. A small dream that she could not be due to the ravages of malnutrition. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded England and Poland. declares war on him. Her mother and she decided to take refuge in the Netherlands.
There, he continued to form, who knows? That terrible war must end one day. But the war worsened and with it the possibility of seeing her dream come true. His great illusion was fading. Although she managed to almost brush him.
In 1944, the protagonist of Breakfast with diamondsShe was already a dancer and used the money she earned from her shows to collaborate with the Dutch resistance. Both she and her mother held clandestine meetings for the resistance, of which they and her uncle were indirectly members..
The actress He came to say on one occasion that he was the best public that he had had since at the end of the performance nothing could be heard, since they had to keep silence so as not to be discovered.
The war progressed, food became scarce and fear increased. Behind the Normandy’s landingGerman troops confiscated food and fuel.
People were cold and starving in the streets. He was baptized as «winter of famine«. Some, including Hepburn, managed to survive by making flour out of tulips.
“I have memories. I remember being at the train station watching the Jews being taken away. I remember one boy in particular, he was with his parents, very pale, very blond, wearing a coat that was too big for him as he got on the train. I was a girl watching a boy,” the actress acknowledged.
But hunger was not the worst of that war. Arnhem, the city where she and her family were taking refuge was invaded and bombed by the Germans. His uncle and a cousin of his mother were captured and shot as members of the resistance, even his brother was captured and interned in a labor camp.
“We saw executions. We saw young men get up against the wall and get shot. They closed the street and then they reopened it so that you could pass by as if nothing had happened. I have marked a place in Anne Frank’s diary where she says that five hostages have been shot. That was the day my uncle was killed. In the words of that girl I read what I still felt inside me»he confessed.
Life during a war does not understand ages or dreams. War destroys and punishes everything it touches, leaving an incurable mark on those who bear it. Little Audrey Kathleen Ruston, He managed to survive that hell to become the icon we have all admired.
However, there is something that never escapes: Memories.
