My grandfather Jack Groothuis was born in 1944 in Vught, a small town in the Netherlands. Jack's mother Helen made the difficult choice to place my grandfather into hiding with a Christian family named the van den Meerendonks. This object written on September 11, 1945 is a letter between the family and Jack’s aunt Marian Schechter, who lived in an apartment on Riverside Drive in New York City. Throughout the letter, Jo van den Meerendonk details the series of fortunes my Opa survived, from no fresh air to a missile destroying part of their home, including the room my grandfather was in. This letter gave Jack's family in America the utmost amount of relief and continues to be a reminder of the kindness of others and the strength of my Opa. When my grandfather suffered from a traumatic brain injury in 2019, this letter was hung across from his hospital bed, reminding us of the life Jack has lived. This letter proves there is nothing my Opa couldn't survive while surrounded by family, then with the van den Meerendonks, and now with the generations that succeed him. To this day, we still keep in touch with the van den Meerendonk family, from celebrating Christian and Jewish holidays to my cousin creating an exhibition of my Opa's story and visiting Vught, staying with this Christian family.

– Maya Groothuis

Relationship:  Grandchild of im/migrant Grandchild of im/migrant