Born in 1929 to an aristocratic Dutch mother and an English father, the famed actress Audrey Hepburn spent her childhood in Britain, Belgium, and the Netherlands. She was in the last of these when World War II began, and despite her young age, eventually became involved with the anti-Nazi resistance, as Rich Tenorio recounts:

[Hepburn’s] mother, the Baroness Ella van Heemstra, met Hitler in the 1930s and wrote admiringly about him in British fascist publications—but changed her mind during the brutal Nazi occupation of the Netherlands from 1940 to 1945. By contrast, the continuing Nazi sympathies of van Heemstra’s ex-husband—Hepburn’s father Joseph Ruston—kept him jailed [in Britain] for the duration of the war. . . .

The baroness began to support the Dutch resistance after the Nazis executed Hepburn’s beloved uncle, Otto Ernst Gelder [in 1942]. Volunteering for the resistance, [Hepburn] aided Jews in hiding, raising funds through dancing to keep them safe. [At her family’s urging, she also refused] an order to join a Nazi artists’ committee, ending her burgeoning dance career, which had made her [the city of] Arnhem’s most famous ballerina by 1944. . . . Hepburn also assisted a remarkable doctor, Hendrik Visser ’t Hooft, who helped shelter hundreds of Jews in the town of Velp throughout the war. . . .

Invited in 1958 to play the role of the most famous Dutch Holocaust victim in the film version of The Diary of Anne Frank, Hepburn found the subject too close to home and turned it down. . . Years after becoming a household name, [however], she took part in public readings of the play.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.