More than 80 years ago in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, young Dutch couple Jo and Frits Hakkens risked everything, hiding and raising a Jewish toddler named Elli Szanowski as their own. Their actions saved little Elli’s life – even though after 1944, they never saw her again.
But decades later in New Zealand, Jo and Frits’ son Marcel and his wife Gloria started searching – and against all odds, finally found Elli alive and well on the other side of the world in Brazil.
Bravery in the face of danger
“They were just doing the right thing,” Marcel, 74, explains simply of his parents’ bravery and resistance efforts during World War II.
“Mum used to tell us about walking across the railway line to pick up coal or bits of food that came off the open carriages. “Machine guns were pointing at her and Germans were yelling at her. She replied something like, ‘You can kill me or I can pick this up.’ She was defiant, but she was also just doing what she had to.”
Courage in impossible moments
For Jo, the war years meant finding courage in impossible moments. She was working as a nanny and housekeeper for Elli’s family when the little girl’s father Abraham, who was a tailor, was rounded up with many other Jews and sent to Mauthausen concentration camp while out buying a birthday gift for his wife Gita.
Fearing for her life, Gita was forced to flee Amsterdam with the help of Frits, who meticulously forged false identity papers to cross the borders into neutral Switzerland. The journey would have been impossible with her two daughters Leny, then three, and Elli, 14 months. So she entrusted their care to two separate families.
Hiding in plain sight
For more than two years, Elli lived with Jo and Frits, who would hide her when it was necessary in a concealed compartment between the two floors of their apartment. Their home was raided more than once, yet Elli remained undiscovered.
Once, when Marcel’s older brother Richard was gravely ill as a baby with diphtheria and rushed to the hospital, Jo and Frits had to leave Elli home alone. Gloria, who met Marcel and his family the day they moved to the quiet Kāpiti Coast town of Paekākāriki in 1960, recalls Jo sharing more about this years later.
“I was absolutely stunned they could hide a child that young,” reveals Gloria, 71.
“She told me they often had to tie her down into her hiding place. “I asked her, ‘Didn’t she scream?’ But I clearly remember Jo replying, ‘No. She was just a good little girl.’”
A heartbreaking farewell
Eventually towards the end of the war, their resistance efforts, which included Frits sabotaging the Luftwaffe planes, caught the attention of the Gestapo. They made the heartbreaking decision to move Elli to another family. To protect her in case they were subjected to interrogation, Jo and Frits never knew the details of her next hiding place.
A childhood in a close-knit community
In stark contrast, after immigrating to New Zealand, Marcel grew up in a tiny, tight-knit community, playing soccer at the end of the street with his then-neighbour and childhood friend Gloria.
“One day on the tennis courts, Marcel asked to take me to a movie at my father’s cinema,” smiles Gloria.
“The kids all thought he only asked me out to get a free movie ticket. But my parents adored him, so he never paid again.”
The long search for Elli
Sitting side by side, the devoted husband and wife tell the Weekly how Jo and Frits passed away from cancer in their early fifties, before ever realising their dream of finding Elli. Once their own five children were grown up, Gloria began searching in earnest for Elli, sending letters to Holocaust centres in the Netherlands, Argentina, Australia and Yad Vashem, the official memorial institution of Israel that remembers the victims of the Holocaust and honours those who risked their lives to save others.
In 2001, they met Frits’ brother Jos in the Netherlands. He was just a child during the war, but he gave them a surname for Elli – albeit spelt incorrectly – and a few scraps of memory about Elli.
“The way I saw it, there were three options,” says Gloria.
The fear of the worst
“Either she had gone to Australia, Argentina or the terrible scenario I imagined was she’d been caught after leaving Jo and Frits and gone to Auschwitz, where children were sent to the gas chambers. “The Germans kept really good records, so if that had happened, I thought I’d find a record. When I couldn’t, I thought that she must be alive somewhere.”
But after 15 years of searching with no progress, Gloria had all but given up. Then in 2010, Marcel took their eight-year-old grandson Caleb to see The Power of Good, a documentary about Sir Nicholas Winton, who rescued hundreds of Jewish children from Czechoslovakia.
Encouraged to try once more
The next day, Caleb returned full of questions for Gloria and she discussed his great-grandparents’ bravery, and how her search for Elli had been unsuccessful.
“He said, ‘You have to keep trying, Nana. You have to try one more time,’” recalls Gloria.
Inspired by Caleb’s enthusiasm, she sent one final email to Yad Vashem. Again, the response apologetically explained there was no record of anyone with that name, but this time they suggested she place a note in the Dutch magazine Aarnspraak, which shares World War II resistance and holocaust survivors’ war stories.
Gloria wrote a few lines describing Elli, Jo and Frits, and the family connection.
A miraculous message
Six weeks later, Marcel opened an email with the subject line, “I think I am the one you’re looking for.”
“It was just a miracle the way we found her,” says Gloria, explaining Elli’s sister Leny, who lives in Los Angeles, had read the magazine while recovering from a broken leg and immediately alerted Elli
in Brazil.
The sisters had moved there with their mother after the war.
“We were totally overcome with disbelief,” remembers Marcel.
Tears and recognition
To ensure it was the right person, he suggested they video call each other and asked that Elli show a photo of her toddler self.
“But before she even put the photo up, I knew it was her because she looked so much like the photo I had in my hand,” shares Marcel.
“We both actually held up the exact same photo. That’s when all the tears started to flow. I told her, ‘You know you’re the daughter my mum never had.’”
A long-awaited reunion
In March 2011, Elli and her sister Leny flew from Brazil to New Zealand to meet Marcel and his older brother Richard, who’s since passed away. Middle brother Cees lived in Europe.
“It was like they were siblings,” says Gloria.
“There was an immediate family connection and she kept saying, ‘You are my brothers.’”
Laughing, they share how Elli was delighted by Kiwi classics, like fish and chips, and learning how to drink through a Tim Tam straw. But most moving of all was taking Elli to Jo and Frits’ graves in Paraparaumu.
Honouring heroes
Deeply grateful for all they did for her, Elli began the process of having Jo and Frits formally recognised for their contributions during the war. In 2012, Jo and Frits were posthumously awarded the Righteous Among the Nations medal at Parliament. They are the only New Zealanders to have received the honour.
Now Jo and Frits’ story has been brought to life in a new book, Saving Elli, written by internationally acclaimed author Doug Gold.
A legacy of courage
“I just feel it completes a scenario of events and categorises my mum and dad in a way they can be honoured,” says Marcel.
“A lot of people have said they were heroes. But it was because of the circumstances that they were compelled to do what they believed was the right thing to do. We can all take some lessons out of that. “In a world where life’s a bit crazy, we can all do something for someone to make a difference and that’s something I often share with people. When we see prejudice or injustice, we all have the choice to stand up and ultimately do something about it.”
Bringing history to life
Gloria praises the author, enthusing, “Doug did an incredible job. He went to Austria and Amsterdam, and did so much research, plus he told us things we didn’t know. “It’s filled in pieces of the jigsaw puzzle for us. He has honoured all those who risked their lives in the same way.”
Marcel and Gloria are still in regular contact with Elli, now 84 years old. Their hope is their children and grandchildren, as well as Elli’s descendants, will keep up the treasured connection that was almost lost to history.
Shares Marcel, “Elli’s granddaughter contacted me this morning. I said to her, as we’re getting older, it’s vital they keep the contact to ensure our intertwined history doesn’t die with our generation.”
Saving Elli by Doug Gold (Allen & Unwin, $37.99).
