Rhodea Shandler was born Henriette Dwinger in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, on August 26, 1918. She became a nurse and married Ernst Bollegraaf. When the Nazis began rounding up Jews, Rhodea, her husband and their daughter went into hiding with sympathetic Christian families. In 1951, Rhodea and her husband, now with five daughters, emigrated to Canada. Shortly after completing her memoir, Rhodea died on February 17, 2006, at the age of eighty-seven.