Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Hepburn (May 4, 1929 – January 20, 1993) was an Anglo-Dutch actress, fashion model, and humanitarian. Born Audrey Kathleen Ruston in Brussels, Belgium, she was the only child of Joseph Anthony Ruston, a Slovakian-born Anglo-Irish banker, and Baroness Ella van Heemstra, a Dutch aristocrat descended from French and English kings. Her father appended the name Hepburn to his surname, and Audrey became Audrey Hepburn-Ruston at the same time. She had two half-brothers, Alexander and Ian Quarles van Ufford, by her mother's first marriage to a Dutch nobleman.

Life during World War Two

Hepburn attended private schools in England and the Netherlands but, after the 1935 divorce of her parents, she was living with her mother at Arnhem, Netherlands when the German invasion and occupation of World War II occurred. At that time she adopted the pseudonym Edda Van Heemstra, modifying her mother's documents to do so, because an "English-sounding" name was considered dangerous. It was never her legal name.http://www.genealogics.org/histories/9396.text.jpg

Related Topics:
England - Netherlands - Arnhem, Netherlands - German - World War II

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

After the landing of the Allied Forces on D-Day, things grew worse under the German occupiers. During the Dutch famine over the winter of 1944, brutality increased and the Nazis confiscated the Dutch people's limited food and fuel supply for themselves. Without heat in their homes, or food to eat, people in the Netherlands starved and froze to death in the streets; particularly so in Arnhem, Netherlands, which was devastated during Operation Market Garden. Suffering from malnutrition, Hepburn developed several health problems. She would stay in bed and read to take her mind off of the hunger, and she danced ballet for groups of people to brighten the mood. Her father left the family at a young age in what she called the most traumatic moment of her life (years later she would locate her father and send him money). The impact of these times would shape her life and values.

Related Topics:
D-Day - Dutch famine - 1944 - Nazis - Arnhem, Netherlands - Operation Market Garden

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~