Willy Wielek-Berg (June 14, 1919 – January 7, 2004) was a

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

translator, film critic, writer, columnist and resistance fighter. She translated the work of dozens of writers, including

Joseph Roth Moses Joseph Roth (2 September 1894 – 27 May 1939) was an Austrian journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga ''Radetzky March'' (1932), about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, his novel of Jewish life ''Job'' ( ...

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and

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Life and work

Wielek-Berg was born as Willy Berg in

Steenwijk Steenwijk (; Low German: ''Steenwiek'', ''Stienwiek'' English: ''Stenwick'') is a city in the Dutch province of Overijssel. It is located in the municipality of Steenwijkerland. It is the largest town of the municipality. Steenwijk received city ...

, the Netherlands, on 14 June 1919 to a traveling salesman Wilhelmus Johannes Berg and shopkeeper Jantje Klijzing. She attended the Hogereburgerschool in

Zwolle Zwolle () is a city and municipality in the Northeastern Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of Overijssel and the province's second-largest municipality after Enschede with a population of 130,592 as of 1 December 2021. Zwolle is o ...

and after finishing her education she was apprenticed to the regional daily newspaper ''Zwolsche Courant''.

War years

Wielek-Berg settled in Amsterdam in 1943. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, she was influenced by a cousin to join a local communist-oriented

resistance group A resistance movement is an organized effort by some portion of the civil population of a country to withstand the legally established government or an occupying power and to disrupt civil order and stability. It may seek to achieve its objectives ...

called CS-6 (for Corellistraat 6) that was making bombs to sabotage the trains of the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

occupying forces. Wielek-Berg worked as a courier but with the other members of the group, she was arrested and sentenced to six months in prison in the House of Detention II on Amstelveenseweg. The Nazis murdered the rest of her group in prison but by feigning hysteria, Wielek-Berg managed to escape their fate and survived. After the war, Wielek-Berg joined the

Communist Party of the Netherlands The Communist Party of the Netherlands ( nl, Communistische Partij Nederland, , CPN) was a Dutch communist party. The party was founded in 1909 as the Social-Democratic Party (SDP) and merged with the Pacifist Socialist Party, the Political Party ...

and briefly wrote about art for ''

De Waarheid ''De Waarheid'' (literally 'The Truth') was the newspaper of the Communist Party of the Netherlands. It originated in 1940 under the German occupation German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or part ...

'' (''The Truth''). But she was dismissed on the basis that her communist convictions were considered "not strong enough," as demonstrated by her decision to review the film ''The Third Man'' (1949). According to Amelink, "She shouldn't have written about a film that was ugly about the Russians."

Career and Marriage

In 1947, Wielek-Berg began to write extensively about

The Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

. In 1952, she married a man by the name of Henk Wielek; which was actually the pseudonym of the Jewish Polish-German writer, film critic and Member of Parliament of the Dutch Labor Party (1973-1978) Wilhelm Kweksilber. She took on his alias as part of her married name becoming Willy Wielek-Berg.Wielek-Berg, Willy, Index entry in: Deutsche Biographie, https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd1017792380.html 9.03.2022 From the 1960s, Wielek-Berg began to focus on translating books and radio plays, and from 1970 she started reviewing films and books for the newspaper ''

Trouw ''Trouw'' (; ) is a Dutch daily newspaper appearing in compact size. It was founded in 1943 as an orthodox Protestant underground newspaper during World War II. Since 2009, it has been owned by DPG Media (known as De Persgroep until 2019). ''Tr ...

''. In doing so, she had to limit her reviews to films considered in good taste and avoid immoral or blasphemous books or movies. At the time, Wielek-Berg did not dare publish a review of ''

Monty Python's Life of Brian ''Monty Python's Life of Brian'' (also known as ''Life of Brian'') is a 1979 British comedy film starring and written by the comedy group Monty Python (Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin). It wa ...

'' because of its blasphemous nature, even though she said in an interview that she "thought that was wonderful."

Writings and death

In 1992, Wielek-Berg made her creative writing debut with the novel ''De Lichten'', which was followed in 1995 by her collection of short stories titled after her cat ''Zwarte de Pik van Botha''. When her husband, Kweksilber, began a slow decline due to

Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegeneration, neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in short-term me ...

, Wielek-Berg cared for him until his death in 1988, unwilling to have him admitted to a care home and running the risk that he would become frightened thinking that he was living in a concentration camp. Wielek-Berg continued writing "until the end. She devoured detective novels by the hundreds." She died in Amsterdam at 84 on 7 January 2004 after a short illness.

Selected works

* 1960: Commander of Auschwitz; self-portrait of an executioner (translation of an autobiography of

Rudolf Höss Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss (also Höß, Hoeß, or Hoess; 25 November 1901 – 16 April 1947) was a German SS officer during the Nazi era who, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, was convicted for war crimes. Höss was the longest-serving comm ...

) * 1964: Death in Rome (translation of Der Tod in Rom by

Wolfgang Koeppen Wolfgang Arthur Reinhold Koeppen (23 June 1906 – 15 March 1996) was a German novelist and one of the best known German authors of the postwar period. Life Koeppen was born out of wedlock in Greifswald, Pomerania, to Marie Köppen, a seamstress w ...

) * 1968: The Blacksmith of Great Wolding (translation from ''

Smith of Wootton Major ''Smith of Wootton Major'', first published in 1967, is a novella by J. R. R. Tolkien. Background The book began as an attempt to explain the meaning of Faery by means of a story about a cook and his cake, and Tolkien originally thought to cal ...

'', by

J. R. R. Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, ; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philology, philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''. From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was ...

) * 1971: Tolkien's Fairy Tales 1 (translations) * 1976: The Infant of Death Radio Play * 1977: Tolkien's Fairy Tales 2 (translations) * 1981: Radetzkymars (translation of the novel by

) * 1992: The Lights (novel) * 1995: ''Zwarte de Pik van Botha (''Botha's Black Cock) (short story collection named after her cat)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wielek-Berg, Willy 1919 births 2004 deaths Writers from Amsterdam 20th-century Dutch women writers Resistance members from Amsterdam Female resistance members of World War II Dutch resistance members 20th-century Dutch writers 20th-century Dutch short story writers Dutch film critics Women film critics Dutch women critics