A man whose grandparents risked their lives by protecting a Jewish girl during Second World War has been reunited with her daughter nearly 80 years on. Suze van der Bijl was only 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 war.
Both her parents along with her brother and sister were killed in Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland where an estimated 250,000 Jews were killed. The brave couple who saved Suze were Joost and Anna Schoen who hid the child's true identity by passing her off as their own daughter.
When the war finally ended Suze was reunited with her surviving family in the Netherlands but later moved to the US. She eventually got married and had two daughters – Arleen and Diane. Now one of her daughters, Arleen Kennedy, travelled from the US to Wales to meet Chris Schoen – the grandson of the couple who saved her mother's life.
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In the most recent episode of Gwesty Aduniad on S4C (translated as 'Reunion Hotel'), which was aired this week, the two met for the first time and shared their past histories together. Chris, a 70-year-old retired printer from Penygroes in Gwynedd, grew up knowing his father, Jaap, had gone into hiding to avoid being taken to a forced labour camp.
Jaap then joined the Dutch Army after the war and was sent for training to the UK where he met his future wife, Pamela, in Wolverhampton. They got married in 1947 before the family relocated to Cardiff. During the episode Chris explained that he had seen footage of Suze's wedding when he was a child and that his father would tell him the story of the "little Jewish girl [they] 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."
Despite being a proud Welsh man Chris said he was always proud of the family connection with the Netherlands and the little girl his family had saved. As a boy he had family holidays with his Dutch relatives, who were also visited by Suze and her daughters from the USA, but it wasn't until the TV series that the two finally got to meet.
When asked by Chris what it was like for Arleen's mother following the war Arleen replied: "My mother's mother was one of six children. Of the six children only two remained after the war – four were killed. Her aunt Klara and her aunt Else survived.
"Klara, her two sons were also hidden with families like your grandparents. So after the war they had made an arrangement that whoever survived would meet at a cousin's house. Apparently they had made a bond, I've been told, that whoever survived the war would take care of each other's children.
"So Klara survived. She was in several concentration camps. She was really sick and she survived. She found my mother and she found her own two children who were in hiding. So then, about six months later, they all came over through Ellis Island."
Arleen had travelled all the way from Boston to meet Chris. During the programme she said: "Had they not saved my mother I wouldn't be here. We were lucky – we were all lucky that they were there at the right time, at the right place.
"I've been looking forward to meeting Chris and getting to know him and I want to know what he knows – he may know things that I don't know. So it's another piece to the puzzle.
"I'm very proud of everything that everybody did because they could've been killed had the Nazis found out that they were hiding a little Jewish girl. If this family did not save my mother she would not be alive, I wouldn't be alive, my sons, grandchildren. It's special."
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 and they were awarded a certificate of honour during a special ceremony of Yad Vashem in an Amsterdam synagogue.
Today Joost and Anna Schone's names are on the Wall of Honour in the Garden of the Righteous in Jerusalem. Gwesty Aduniad's most recent episode is available on catch-up S4C Clic with English subtitles available.
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