A man whose grandparents risked their lives to shelter a little Jewish girl just like Anne Frank has been reunited with her daughter - nearly 80 years on.
Suze van der Bijl was five years old when she was taken into hiding in a loft in the Netherlands in 1944 by a family involved with the Dutch resistance during the World War Two.
Both her parents, and her brother and sister were killed in Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, where an estimated 250,000 Jews were killed.
Her life was saved by brave couple Joost and Anna Schoen, who passed her off as their own daughter, although Suze had dark hair and the family were blond.
After the war ended Suze was reunited with her surviving family in the Netherlands, but moved to the US.
She married and had two daughters, Arleen and Diane.
Nearly 80 years later, Arleen Kennedy travelled to the UK to meet Chris Schoen, the grandson of the couple who saved her mum's life.
Chris, 70, a retired printer from Penygroes, Gwynedd, grew up knowing his dad Jaap had gone into hiding to avoid being taken to a forced labour camp.
Jaap joined the Dutch Army after the war and was sent for training to the UK where he met his future wife, Pamela, in Wolverhampton, marrying her in 1947 before the family moved to Cardiff.
Chris had seen footage of Suze's wedding when he was a child and his dad would tell him the story and say 'that's the little Jewish girl we hid'.
Chris said: “Joost and Anna were known for being very patriotic and were approached by the Dutch Resistance and asked to look after this little girl.
“Her mother had handed her over to the Resistance because she knew she and her husband and their two older children were going to be picked up by the Gestapo.
"They were shipped off to Sobibor and were murdered in the gas chambers there soon after arriving.
“My grandmother in particular was a very feisty woman – she would plant orange marigolds outside the house and the Nazis would rip them out but she’d re-plant them anyway.
“They were involved in sheltering Allied airmen shot down in the Netherlands and using a hidden radio and a printing press to pass on information.
"Suze even slept under the printing press in the loft.
“Their home was searched by the Gestapo but it had two lofts and they searched the wrong one – the other was blocked off and they didn’t search it.
“They asked Suze what was in the loft and she replied, ‘Mice’, so I don’t think they were very bright – she was the only dark-haired one in a family who were all blond.
“But it was dangerous. In a nearby village all the young men were taken as forced labour to Germany and not many came back.
“My father, Jaap, who was a young man in his early 20s, spent the rest of the war going from hiding place to hiding place to avoid something similar.”
When Chris was little they had family holidays with Dutch relatives, including Chris’s cousin family historian Ed Van Rijswijk, who were also visited by Suze and her daughters from the USA.
They received a reel of film of Suze’s wedding from the USA and Chris remembers his father getting a projector and his mum putting a bedsheet up on the wall and seeing for the first time woman his grandparents saved from the Nazis.
Chris remembers his dad always used to point to the bride and say, ‘That’s the little Jewish girl we hid’.
He met Arleen who is now 58, married and a mum-of-two who lives near Boston, Massachusetts at Iscoyd Park, near Bangor on Dee, and says he sees her as a step-cousin.
The meeting was arranged for Welsh TV show Gwesty Aduniad (translated to Reunion Hotel).
Chris said: “Earlier this year I met up with her.
“It was great. I was very nervous but she turned out to be a real character and lovely to get on with.
“We keep in touch now on Facebook and she has invited me to go over to Massachusetts.
"It’s just great that we’ve been brought together after all these years.”
The courage of Chris’s grandparents in sheltering little Suze from the Nazis has been recognised – their story was featured in the book ‘The Other Schindler’s List’, published in 1999.
Chris added: “There are still Holocaust deniers out there and people need to be reminded that this was a reality and should not be forgotten.
"It impacted my family and millions of lives.”
Joost and Anna had been recognised by the Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, with a specially minted medal bearing their name, and their names are on the Wall of Honour in the Garden of the Righteous in Jerusalem.
In 2012, a Yad Vashem ceremony was held in an Amsterdam synagogue to remember Dutch people who risked their lives to help persecuted Jews during the War when Chris’s grandparents were among those recognised.
Gwesty Aduniad will be shown at 9pm on Tuesday on S4C.
