Any number of times, Hank Gillebaard’s boyhood in Holland could have been cut short.
There was the time he was incarcerated by German occupation forces, accused by classmates at school of being Jewish. Gillebaard, then 15, was rescued before he could be shipped off to a detention camp by a friend of his father who spotted him and pretended Gillebaard was wanted for a crime and needed by local authorities.
Around the same time period, Gillebaard risked his life to relay notes tossed over a fence for his former teacher, only learning later what they were for.