He raced up the stairs. Blond curls messy as always. The grooves in his otherwise young face had long been deep, but now Krijn Breur looked extremely worried. And agitated. Bursting into the first floor flat, he shouted: ‘Nol, you need to get out of here. At once. We’ve been betrayed.’ That last word wasn't lost on Nol Bueno de Mesquita. A bit older, wearing spectacles and with wavy dark hair, Nol had always feared betrayal, but it took time to grasp the first part of Krijn's message. Get out, yes. But how?

Two and a half years earlier German armies had occupied the Netherlands, where Nol had married Ter Kolthoff in June 1940, barely a month after the invasion. When a friend had asked the Jewish couple that summer to ‘do something against these rotters’, they had joined resistance groups. The consequences of that step overtook them in 1942. The German police and their Dutch helpers were hunting Krijn and his fellow resistance fighters. The trail led to Nol and Ter's flat on an Amsterdam canal, just outside the old Jewish neighbourhood. Their daughter Ruth was only one and a half years old and Ter suspected being pregnant again. It was getting cold; the winter frost was about to descend. Days were shortening. The evening curfew made it dangerous to go out at night. Actually, it was just as unsafe in daylight. There were roadblocks, raids and round ups. The deportation of Jews from the Netherlands was in full swing. Was it possible to escape? And if so, where could they go?

They got away, because I met Nol in 1985, 40 years after the end of the Second World War. Although ageing and balding, he strongly resembled the man he had been in 1942. As he told me his story, Nol was serious, but occasionally his eyes betrayed a streak of mischief.

The reason for meeting Nol was to ask him about his wartime experience. At the time I was studying history at the University of Amsterdam, following a few years of journalistic work, and I earned a living for my young family by working as a freelance reporter.