NIEUWLANDE, Netherlands (JTA) — On a cold February morning in 1945, a Dutch Nazi SS unit noticed a foreign-looking man walking around a farm in this remote village.
The Nazis confronted farm owner Jan van der Helm and gunned him down when he tried to escape. They discovered five Jews in hiding on the farm, and beat one of them, Szaya Reiner, to death in front of his wife, two sons and his nephew. The remaining four got sent to a concentration camp and eventually survived the Holocaust.
The murder of van der Helm, a father of two, was a shocking tragedy for the close-knit rural community of Nieuwlande.
Stay up to date on conference news and updates