1 week Ago By Alejandra Palés
An admired actress and style icon, Audrey Hepburn has always been seen surrounded by glamour. Her childhood, one of the lesser-known episodes in her biography, is far from that image. War, famine, and a tyrannical, Nazi-sympathizing mother are three of the elements that shaped her youth, as explained in the graphic novel.
(Planeta Cómic), written by Salva Rubio and illustrated by Loreto Aroca. The story begins when the actress receives the offer to play Anne Frank in the fictional film, a proposal that connects Hepburn with her own experiences during World War II in the Netherlands. Although Anne Frank's father, Otto Frank, begged the actress to accept the project, she refused: she didn't want to relive the horrors of her childhood.
It's difficult to assign a nationality to Audrey Hepburn. The actress was born in Brussels, the daughter of Dutch aristocrat Ella van Heemstra and Briton Victor Anthony Ruston, both admirers of British fascism. The couple separated in 1935 and decided that their daughter should be educated at a boarding school near Canterbury.
But four years later, Hepburn's stability was shattered: when England declared war on Germany in September 1939, her mother decided to take her to the Netherlands, confident that the country's past neutrality would prevent German attacks. Audrey Hepburn arrived without speaking Dutch and with a name that made it clear she wasn't from the country. Her mother solved the problem by having everyone call her Edda van Heemstra.
Ella van Heemstra was cold, emotionally distant, and initially a Hitler sympathizer (one of her closest friends was Unity Mitford, who was part of the Nazi leader's inner circle). She was convinced that the Germans would never invade the Netherlands, but time proved her wrong: on May 10, 1940, the German army entered Holland. During the years the Nazis occupied the country, Hepburn suffered the deaths of people close to her.
In 1942, following a Resistance attack, her uncle Otto was captured and executed, becoming one of the first five Dutch victims of this reprisal. When he was 19, Audrey's older half-brother, Ian, was forcibly removed from the family and forced to work in a Reich munitions factory. During the years of occupation, Audrey dreamed of becoming a dancer, a discipline she began training in when she arrived in the Netherlands.
However, as living conditions and access to food worsened, physical activity became more difficult. Like many Dutch children, the future Hollywood star was affected by the "hunger winter," which lasted until May 1945 and caused 20,000 deaths. Hepburn, who once went three days without eating anything, was ill during those years, and the after-effects stayed with her throughout her life.
Anemia, jaundice, edema, and respiratory infections were just some of the medical problems she suffered. Once famous, Hepburn avoided speaking publicly about the war, although her son, Luca Dotti, says it had a profound impact on her. "When my mother wanted to teach me a life lesson, she never used stories from her career.
She always talked about the war. The war was very important to her. It made her who she was," explains Dotti, who has written several books about her mother.
In the book , Ian Woodward captures one of the few times the protagonist of She spoke about the impact of the conflict. "The war left me with a profound understanding of human suffering that I hope other young people don't have to experience. The things I saw during the occupation made me very realistic about life, and I've been that way ever since.
I don't discount any of the terrible things I feel or read about the Nazis. It was far worse than you can imagine. It was more important, far more than wealth, luxury, food, a career, or anything else you can name," explained Hepburn, who did humanitarian work with UNICEF for years.
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