Jack Groothuis’ life was at risk from the moment he was born to two Jewish parents during the Holocaust.
To protect her son, his mother, Helen, placed him into hiding with a Christian family in Vught, a town about 59 miles southeast of Amsterdam. Jack spent the first two years of his life being raised as a member of the family by Jo and Lanie van de Meerendonk, hidden in plain sight from the Nazis who ran the Herzogenbusch concentration camp out of the town.
Once the country was liberated from the Nazi regime, mother and son reunited and came to America. For many years, no one in either family spoke much of this story, a common response in Holocaust survivors. But now, 80 years later, Jack’s granddaughter, Andie Weiner, a fourth-year Theatre and Psychology student is telling the story of how one family risked everything to help another.
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Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
