‘Aunt Annie’ was killed in the Holocaust – but not before marrying her sweetheart in captivity. Now her great-niece has found 260 other couples who did the same
Saskia Aukema knew little about her great-aunt Annie, who was murdered during the Holocaust. All she knew was that Annie had declined to go into hiding like her siblings, and continued working as a hospital nurse, even after the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands began in May 1940.
“That was the family story: this was the woman who didn’t hide and chose to be with her patients. That was all I knew… this line, this one sentence,” she told the Observer.