Nieuwlande – Unyielding Hiding Village

In barns, between ceilings and in dugouts in the woods… in Nieuwlande, a small farming village in the Netherlands, no place was left unused during World War II to hide Jewish and non-Jewish refugees. All villagers were in on it, and all of them maintained silence.

Only two villages in the world have earned the Yad Vashem Award, a distinction reserved for non-Jews who took great risks to save Jews during the Holocaust. The small village of Nieuwlande, in the eastern Dutch province of Drenthe, is one of them. This documentary, broadcast on Dutch Remembrance Day, investigates the story behind the resistance to the nazis in Nieuwlande. Why were so many villagers willing to offer shelter to people they didn’t know? Thereby risking their own lives? Who were the Jews seeking a hiding place? What role did faith play? And: what did the Germans know?