For nearly 60 years, Flory Van Beek has carried with her a glass shard that once pierced her neck.
The remnant of a shattered porthole on the Dutch ship SS Simon Bolivar is about a quarter-inch thick, 2 inches long and three-fourths of an inch wide. When the Bolivar hit a German mine and exploded in November 1939, it became the first neutral ship sunk in the North Sea during World War II with 16-year-old Flory and her 26-year-old future husband, Felix, aboard.
Because of the advancing German army, the couple was among numerous Jews fleeing the Netherlands aboard the South America-bound ship. Both were severely injured in the explosion, but they were among the lucky 274 of the ship's 400 passengers and crew who were pulled from icy waters by British sailors after a second explosion sank the ship.
It was only after doctors in England removed the shard of glass from the back of Van Beek's neck that she learned how fortunate she had been: The glass had lodged a millimeter from her carotid artery. Ever since, she has kept the near-lethal piece of glass close.
"I can't explain why, but I want it with me somehow," said Van Beek, who today lives in Newport Beach. "Sometimes I look at it, and I think it was a miracle that I survived. The doctors couldn't believe it themselves."
It wouldn't be the last miracle, either, she said.
Van Beek chronicles her good fortunes in "Flory: Survival in the Valley of Death" (Seven Locks Press, $22.95), the story of how she and Felix survived the Holocaust, thanks to three families of Dutch Christians who hid the couple in their homes for three years.
"They were very courageous, risking their own lives and that of their children," Flory Van Beek recalled. "They were real patriots, but they didn't consider themselves heroes, really. They thought it was the human thing to do."
Hank Hornsveld, 77, one of the two sons of the second family that took in the Van Beeks after a late-night visit by the Gestapo forced the couple to flee their first hiding place, explained it this way: "We're in the world to help each other. People in need need help, and that's the way it was. We don't worry about what nationality or what religion they are."
Hornsveld, a retired Costa Mesa electrical contractor who came to the United States in 1957, said Van Beek has done a "fantastic job" telling her story.
