Willemina Squires

This story is submitted by Willemina Squires of Head Office in Charlottetown. It is a story of her mother living in Holland during the war.

"As a young girl I would often look through a box of pictures that came with us when we immigrated to Canada from Holland. I remember coming across a picture of a beautiful little girl and asking my mother who this little girl was and if she was a relative.

With tears in her eyes, she looked at this picture and explained to me that this little girl was the daughter of a Jewish family that she worked for before and during the first part of World War Two. My mother was 17 years old when the war broke out in Holland, she was a housekeeper and nanny for this family. She would often take the little girl on outings and continued to do so even after the war broke out. On many occasions she had claimed her as her own daughter when questioned by German soldiers about the girl. For months after the war started, my mother would show up for work until one morning she would find that the German soldiers had taken over the house and made it one of their headquarters. The family was gone, she never saw the little girl or her family again.

My mother has since passed away, but the picture of the little Jewish girl is still in the box of our family pictures. I don't know her name, but whenever I see her picture it always brings to mind this story and the impact the war had on my family."