I Survived the Holocaust; My Parents Died in Auschwitz

Andre Holten, 86, is the only survivor of his immediate family during the Holocaust, staying alive by stowing away with a righteous gentile family for the last two years of World War II. Andre’s experience is as a "hidden child," after his birth parents made the excruciating, but ultimately life-saving decision to ask a Christian family to take him in. 

Andre was a Jewish 5-year-old, when he went "underground" with Johannes and Petronella Meijer in the town of Haarlem, not far from where he was born in Holland, where he hid out under a false name for the last two years of World War II. In January 1944, his parents and maternal grandparents were loaded onto a train with nearly 1,000 others, bound for Auschwitz. His mother and grandparents were immediately sent to the gas chamber, while his father was forced to work in a nearby camp and was murdered in August. 

Holten survived the war, completing high school under the wing of the Meijers, before immigrating to the United States in 1956, where he earned a physics degree from the City College of New York. He enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, reaching the rank of captain, and after the Air Force spent 22 years as a substitute teacher in Albuquerque, New Mexico.