A man whose grandparents risked their lives by protecting a Jewish girl during Second World War has been reunited with her daughter nearly 80 years on. Suze van der Bijl was only five years old when she was taken into hiding in a loft in the Netherlands in 1944 by a family involved with the Dutch resistance during the war.
Both her parents along with her brother and sister were killed in Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland where an estimated 250,000 Jews were killed. The brave couple who saved Suze were Joost and Anna Schoen who hid the child's true identity by passing her off as their own daughter.
When the war finally ended Suze was reunited with her surviving family in the Netherlands but later moved to the US. She eventually got married and had two daughters – Arleen and Diane. Now one of her daughters, Arleen Kennedy, travelled from the US to Wales to meet Chris Schoen – the grandson of the couple who saved her mother's life.
