It was the "Hunger Winter" of 1944-45. Thousands of Dutch citizens were literally starving to death under the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Ten-year-old Johannes Krane and his brother Dick lived in Beverwijk, a suburb north west of Amsterdam. Their parents are both deaf and mute. How would their family survive the cruelties of the Nazi occupiers and life in the streets of their city? There was no answer but to support their mother's effort to trade on the black market and steal from businesses in the authorities—perilous activities, punishable by death. This book conveys the haunting memories of a boy who survived to save his family through cunning and desperation, thus being robbed forever of a happy childhood—an INNOCENCE DENIED by the evils of war.