As a little Jewish girl in the Netherlands during World War II, Anneke Bloomfield hid from the Nazis. Here is Anneke just before the war at age 4, with her brother, Klaasje, age 5. Bloomfield will tell her story at 3 p.m. Monday at WSU Vancouver during a Holocaust Remembrance Day event.
o What: Holocaust Remembrance Day free public event
o When: 3-6 p.m. Monday
o Where: Dengerink Administration building, rooms 129 and 130, WSU Vancouver, 14204 N.E. Salmon Creek Ave.
o Parking: Metered or $3 for the day in the blue pay lot
Both Anne Frank and Anneke Bloomfield were Jewish girls growing up in the Netherlands when World War II erupted and Nazi Germany invaded their country.
Both girls went into hiding to save their lives. Anne didn’t survive, but Anneke did.
At age 10, Bloomfield spent the last year of the war hiding from the Germans, eating in a soup kitchen and staving off hunger by foraging for food.
“I would go out in a field and find a potato,” the Sherwood, Ore., resident said.
Bloomfield, 77, will share her survival story at 3 p.m. Monday for Holocaust Remembrance Day at Washington State University Vancouver.
Bloomfield was 5 when the Germans invaded the Netherlands and sent most of its Jewish population to concentration camps.
Before the war, Bloomfield’s father saw trouble coming for the Jews and moved his family out of their Jewish neighborhood in The Hague. They posed as Christians, and attended a Christian church and school.
“I became a Protestant,” she said.
As a further safeguard, Bloomfield and her siblings were separated and sent away from the city to be hidden by Christian families.
Not all the people hiding Jews were good people.
During the last year of the war, Bloomfield lived with an abusive man. In fear, she locked herself in her little room every night with no heat or electricity. But unlike so many Dutch Jews, she survived.
