Audrey Hepburn turned heads on screen and in real life with her grace, style, and radiant beauty. Her combination of sophistication and innocent charm endeared her to millions around the world. Away from the cameras, she was known for her tireless efforts on behalf of children in need. It was a drive rooted in her own experience as a child in World War II. In the conflicts, she endured Nazi occupation and risked her life to help the Dutch Resistance. Below are some interesting facts about that amazing woman.
Caught Up in World War II
Audrey Hepburn (1929 – 1993) was an icon of both fashion and Hollywood’s Golden Age. She was inducted into the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame, and was ranked by the American Film Institute as one of classical Hollywood’s greatest female screen legends. Her rise to international stardom began in 1953 when she appeared alongside Gregory Peck in the romantic comedy Roman Holiday. She was a smashing success. Hepburn became the first actress to win an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA for a single performance.
Less known about her that before she rose to fame, a child Hepburn had helped the Dutch Resistance in WWII. She was born Audrey Kathleen Ruston in 1929 in Brussels, to a British father and a Dutch aristocratic mother. Her parents eventually divorced, and in 1939, ten-year-old Audrey, her siblings, and her mother, moved to Arnhem in the Netherlands. When WWII began in 1939, the future icon’s mother moved her family from Belgium to the Netherlands. She hoped that, as had happened in WWI, the Dutch would remain neutral.
Audrey Hepburn’s Life Under Nazi Occupation
The hopes of Audrey Hepburn’s mother that the Germans would respect Dutch neutrality were crushed. Hitler and the Nazis had other ideas, and on May 10th, 1940, the Germans invaded. After a brief resistance, the massively outnumbered and overwhelmed Dutch were forced to surrender four days later. At the time, Audrey was enrolled in a conservatory, where she was taught and honed her skills as a ballerina. Like the rest of the Dutch, she and her family suffered great privations under Nazi occupation.
In 1942, the Germans executed Audrey’s uncle in retaliation for sabotage by the resistance, even though he had not been involved. Her half-brother was deported to Germany to toil for the Nazis as a slave worker, and another sibling went into hiding to avoid the same fate. As Hepburn recalled years later: “had we known that we were going to be occupied for five years, we might have all shot ourselves. We thought it might be over next week… six months… next year… that’s how we got through”.
Helping the Dutch Resistance
Given what the Nazis had done to her uncle, and what they were doing to everybody in the Netherlands, it was understandable that Audrey Hepburn wanted to do what she could against her country’s brutal occupiers. Despite her tender years, she did not just wish that she could do something: she went ahead and acted, and put her life on the line to help with the struggle against the Nazis. She had trained as a ballerina and dancer from a young age, so she put those talents to use to help the Dutch Resistance.
Audrey performed in illegal underground recitals known as zwarte avonden (“black evenings”), and donated what she earned to the resistance. She danced and performed even though she was quite enfeebled from hunger: the Germans had squeezed the Netherlands hard for resources to fuel their war effort. Within a few years, Audrey like many other Dutch, began to suffer from malnutrition. Nonetheless, she danced. As she put it: “it was some way in which I could make some kind of contribution”.
A Child Courier for the Resistance
Audrey Hepburn also acted as a child courier, put to such use by the Dutch Resistance because her youth made her less suspicious in the eyes of the German occupiers. She carried documents, coded messages, and other items between various resistance groups. On one occasion, she recalled: “I had to step in and deliver our tiny underground newspaper, I stuffed them in my woolen socks and my wooden shoes, I got on my bike, and delivered them”. In the last few months of the war, a German blockade of food to the Netherlands led to a famine known as the Hunger Winter. Audrey and her family subsisted on minuscule food amounts, including tulip bulbs.
By the time the Netherlands were liberated at war’s end, the future movie star and her family were at starvation’s door. As she put it: “We lost everything, of course… but we didn’t give a hoot. We got through with our lives, which was all that mattered”. Soon after the war, she moved to Britain, got her first film role in 1948, and went on to star in dozens more movies. She never forgot her childhood experience in wartime, though. Audrey Hepburn eventually became a special ambassador for United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), an organization dedicated to providing humanitarian aid to children worldwide.
_________________
Some Sources & Further Reading
Imperial War Museums – Five Film Stars’ Wartime Roles
Paris, Barry – Audrey Hepburn (1996)
