Lous Steenhuis Hoepelman (F / Netherlands, 1941), Holocaust survivor

Lous Steenhuis Hoepelman (F / Netherlands, 1941), Holocaust survivor.

• KEYWORDS : <Hidden Children, Netherlands> <Westerbork> <Bergen-Belsen> <Terezin Train> <Theresienstadt> / <Liberation of Theresienstadt>

Biography

Lous Steenhuis-Hoepelman was born into a Jewish family in Amsterdam in 1941. Her parents were not religious; they were communists and were part of the political resistance movement. When deportations of Jews from the Nazi-occupied Netherlands started, they wanted to protect their three-year old daughter by bringing her to a non-Jewish foster family.

The presence of the child was however revealed to the occupiers, and she was arrested and transported to a prison. From there, she was brought to a group of orphans in the transit camp of Westerbork and later to Bergen-Belsen and, finally, to the concentration camp Theresienstadt where she was liberated.

Her father died in Auschwitz, her mother survived.