00:00 If someone was watching on the streets of Amsterdam in 1942, they would have seen a
00:08 family with three daughters playing in the street.
00:11 The youngest was named Willie.
00:13 She was just two years old.
00:15 My name was Wilhelmina van der Zeyden.
00:18 I remember playing with the kids on the street.
00:21 I accepted the family as my mother and father, and the two children that they had were my
00:29 sisters.
00:30 And to me, it was as normal as it could be.
00:35 But things weren't normal.
00:37 Things were much different than they appeared.
00:39 During that time, you must remember that Holland was an occupied country, and things for everyone
00:46 were difficult.
00:47 The children who appeared to be her sisters were anything but, and the people she called
00:53 mom and dad weren't even related to her.
00:56 I joined as the third daughter when I was about two, and I stayed there until I was
01:03 six.
01:07 But to figure out how that little girl got there, you have to go even farther back in
01:12 time, before 1942, before the Nazis invaded the Netherlands during World War II.
01:19 The little girl who thought her name was Wilhelmina van der Zeyden didn't even know her real last
01:25 name.
01:26 Her name at birth was Wilhelmina de Katt, and I was a hidden child during World War
01:32 II in the Netherlands.
01:34 I never was taken to a concentration camp.
01:39 I don't have numbers tattooed on my wrist, but nevertheless, I suffered many of the consequences
01:50 of being hidden, of having my identity as a Jew hidden from the Nazis.
02:05 Wilhelmina de Katt, now Willy Juhlen, was a victim of the Holocaust, and though she
02:11 didn't die as millions of others did in the concentration camps, her life was taken
02:15 a different way.
02:20 Her parents, her childhood, even her religious identity were taken from her as a hidden child
02:24 of the Holocaust.
02:31 Young Willy lived life like a normal child, thinking that her hiding family was her real
02:36 family, even though adding a two-year-old could appear odd to outsiders.
02:41 They explained away my presence in their household to the neighbors by saying that I was a cousin.
02:51 She tried to blend in with her hidden family, and though she was born Jewish, she was raised
02:55 as a Catholic and went to church.
02:58 I wasn't hidden, literally, like Anne Frank was hidden.
03:02 They were hidden in the attic and they couldn't go out for about two years.
03:07 When the war ended, Willy was reunited with her grandmother, who decided that she would
03:12 take Willy and her brother to America.
03:15 And that was when she learned of her parents' fate.
03:18 My parents were taken to Auschwitz.
03:20 They didn't stay there very long, but they were murdered, and that's the only word I
03:27 can use, is murdered, shortly after their arrival, where I'm sure their fate was what
03:33 was typical in Auschwitz, where they were murdered in the gas chambers.
03:38 The things that people had to do to keep Willy from the same fate must have been hard, but
03:43 sometimes the right things to do are the hardest.
03:46 And as for Willy, though she has gotten older, her loss hasn't faded.
03:51 And still to this day, when people, friends of mine, talk about their mothers, I am very
04:03 quiet because I have nothing to talk about.
04:08 But Willy can count herself as one of the survivors of the Holocaust, who was lucky
04:14 to be with us to tell her story.
04:16 I feel it very important because these children, and now people of my generation, are getting
04:23 older, and I feel it's very important to chronicle this, because we won't be here that much longer.
04:33 And again, we must never forget that this did happen.
04:40 World War II was the deadliest war in history, killing over 50 million people around the
04:46 world.
04:47 Of the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust, 1 million were children.
04:52 But thousands of children like Willy survived because of the people who risked everything
04:58 to stand against hatred.
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