Elli and the story of the couple who saved her from the Nazis

Although they both died young, Frits and Jo Hakkens had 25 happy years in New Zealand.

“They lived very ordinary lives before the war, and they lived very ordinary lives after the war. But they were heroes during it." says New Zealand author Doug Gold.

In Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, Resistance couple the Hakkens, risked everything by concealing little Elli Szanowski in a camouflaged space above their ceiling.

Gold stumbled across this true tale after receiving an email from a reader of his previous bestselling book, The Dress Maker and the Hidden Soldier.

Wellington-based Gold's book about the saga is called Saving Elli.

Elli’s father Abraham Szanowski, a tailor, was buying a present for his wife when the Nazis rounded him up, Gold tells RNZ’s Sunday Morning.

“He was caught up in what they called the first Razzia, which is a purge of Jews. And there were 400 of them rounded up randomly in the area that Abraham happened to be at that particular time.

“And they were then transported to Buchenwald Concentration Camp. And from there, they went to Mauthausen Concentration Camp, where Abraham was literally worked to death,” he says.

This left his wife Gita and their two girls, Elli, just 18-months old, and Leny, at the mercy of further Nazi raids. Gita had to act fast, Gold says.

Gita knew she had no choice but to leave her children as both she and they would have been shipped off to a concentration camp, Gold says. She left Leny with her brother-in-law, and Elli with the Hakkens.

The Hakkens lived a few doors away from where Anne Frank was being similarly hidden, he says.

Gita, having made her children as safe as possible, fled, he says, and embarked on a perilous journey, first through Belgium and France and then on to neutral Switzerland.

“But she had a lot of escapades and close calls on the way. She was arrested in Paris, and interrogated, and managed to talk her way out of that. Her hotel room was also raided.

“What little money and the diamonds that she had sewn into the hem of her dress were all stolen.”

With what funds she had left she paid some “pretty disreputable characters” to take her over treacherous mountain pass into the safety of Switzerland.

Abraham lasted four months before being rounded up by the Nazis, Gold says.

“Very few Dutch that went to concentration camps, less than 5 percent of all the Dutch deportees, survived the war. So, for little Elli, that's mum and dad gone.”

The Hakkens risked certain death if they were found harbouring a Jewish child, he says. They kept Elli safely hidden despite being raided three times by the Nazis.

Jo and Frits were eventually betrayed by a collaborator neighbour, he says.

“They had to give up Elli because the Nazis were very close to arresting Frits. So, he had to go into hiding."

Elli was placed in the care of another Dutch Resistance family, he says. The Hakkens never knew who that family was.

“They neither wanted to, nor would the Resistance tell them because if they did know and were ever interrogated, the new location of Elli could have been found. So, they had no idea where she was.”

Fritz and Jo eventually emigrated to New Zealand after the war with their three children and went to great lengths, he says, to find Elli.

“Because at the end of the day, they regarded her as their daughter. But no trace, no one knew where she was. It was as if she'd been lost from the face of the Earth.

“And they assumed that she must have been captured and perhaps sent to Auschwitz or one of the other concentration camps.”

Frits and Jo died in their 50s, but Marcel, their son, and Gloria his wife took up the search, Gold says.

Meanwhile Gita had survived the war, emigrated to South America first Argentina then Brazil, and found her two missing children Leny and Elli who were reunited with her.

Elli lives in Brazil to this day, he says.

“I've spoken to her several times in the course of researching this book. She's still alive and speaks very good English.”

Marcel had a breakthrough in his search for Elli after about 20 years of frustrating dead ends. It transpired they had the wrong spelling of Elli's name which had derailed their search.

Then one day Marcel went to the cinema with his grandson Caleb where they saw a film about the English stockbroker Nicholas Winton who organised the escape of thousands of Czechoslovakian Jews during the war.

“And he was so moved by this documentary, that he said to Gloria, try one more time.”

Gloria placed an ad in a Dutch magazine for Holocaust survivors, he says.

“Elli's sister, Leny, happened to be in bed with a broken leg. And she read it from cover to cover and saw this small ad and said, this has to be my sister.

“So she contacted Elli, Elli contacted Marcel and Gloria. They set up a video call. And they both had an identical photo of Elli. So they were absolutely sure that she was the one.”

Elli and Leny subsequently came to New Zealand to visit the family, he says.

“And that was a really joyous occasion. Elli was very effusive in her praise and thanks for Frits and Jo and what they did for her during the war.

“It's very unlikely she would have survived without their courage and heroism.”