When my youngest son Alex (now 15) was born, I took him to visit my great-aunt Fay. As we got talking, she told me the story of my grandmother Cilla, who handed her only daughter (my mother) to strangers to protect her during the War.

As the mother of three young children, I imagined the searing heartbreak of Cilla’s agonising pain, as a young parent, to send her daughter and then her son into hiding in Holland, unsure if she would ever see them again as the War raged on. For too long I had shut my mind off to this family history, because of the heartache it would bring. Not any longer. I was approaching forty and it was time for me to face the truth.

I travelled to Amsterdam to trace the footsteps of my grandmother and her family. I knew from the story of Anne Frank about the Nazi invasion of Amsterdam in May 1940 and the rounding up of the Jews, but little else. During my research I was shocked by the irony of the situation: a city which had had firm Jewish roots for centuries had turned its back on these citizens. I could not believe how close my grandparents’ quaint apartment on Plantage Parklaan was to the places just around the corner, where atrocities were being committed.

Their home was also around the corner from the Hollandsche Schouwburg Theatre, a striking classical building converted into the horrific round-up centre for thousands of Jews, crammed like sardines till they were taken to Westerbork Transit Camp, where, ironically, German Jewish refugees had originally disembarked, to find a welcome in this country. And now from this same place they were deported to Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Sobibor and Thereisenstadt.

My mother was saved by the courage of a wonderful couple, Aad and Fie Versnel. They hid her in their home in Wormerveer, just ten miles outside Amsterdam, for two years. They became very attached to the little girl and shaped and influenced her early years. Giving her back to her birth parents was especially painful for them as they had no children of their own.

I later discovered that Aad was one of four brothers. Another brother also hid a Jewish child and the third brother was a lithographer who owned a studio, and helped the Resistance by forging identity cards and food stamps. He was arrested in 1944 and tragically died in a German prison just a few weeks before the end of the war.

My mother had lost touch with the Versnel's two daughters (born after the War), but thanks to a Facebook post we reconnected in a matter of days. Months later we all met up in London in an emotional reunion. This also meant that Aad and Fie Versnel could finally be recognised as righteous Gentiles.

For my mother, my mission to uncover her past was an intensely emotional experience. For many decades she had kept this part of her early childhood closed and private. It meant confronting difficult memories and thoughts about what she and her mother experienced.

But it has been priceless for my children and the future generations. Not only is it an important part of history for our family, but also for the many schoolchildren to whom we have told the tale.