Marty Brounstein didn’t set out to write a book about the human drama that was the Holocaust, but one arose almost organically after a 2009 trip to the Netherlands brought his wife face-to-face with her distant past.
Brounstein will be speaking at the Diane and Guilford Glazer Institute for Jewish Studies at Pepperdine University on Nov. 14. Brounstein is the author of “Two Among The Righteous Few,” an account of the heroics of Frans and Mien Wijnakker, a young Catholic couple who saved the lives of more than two dozen Jews by concealing them during the Holocaust.
It’s a startling story—the Wijnakkers were not affluent, nor were they crusaders. They were simple people from a small town in southern Holland.
“They were just good people, trying to do what they felt was right,” said Brounstein. “And they found themselves standing on the edge in a very dangerous situation. These were true heroes.”
The Netherlands was home to 170,000 Jews before World War II, Brounstein said, including Anne Frank. By war’s end, more than 100,000 were dead.
By the fall of 1943, the Wijnakkers had already been aiding and sheltering a number of Jews, eventually—with the help of others—leading many of them to freedom.
One couple saved by the Wijnakkers— the Baars—feared they would be sent away when the wife, Engelien, realized she was pregnant. The complications of having a baby in hiding from the Nazis were vast, as the Baars and Wijnakkers knew. In a heroically, selfless act, the Wijnakkers decided to pretend the baby was theirs.
“He (Frans) had no qualms about it, but Mien did. These were different times. They already had four children of their own,” Brounstein said, “and she had been taught that abstinence for a married, Catholic couple was a sin.”
But Mein’s heart won out. She wore a pillow under her clothes to look pregnant and when the baby was born, treated the child, Ineke, as their own in public —while the true parents remained in hiding in the Wijnakkers’ house. The family survived.
In 2009, Brounstein traveled to the Netherlands with his wife, who was born there during the war. In the town of Dieden, she asked a villager if he knew a man named Frans Wijnakker.
Then she introduced herself. “I am Ineke Baars,” she said.
The man she sought was the son of the Wijnakkers—the couple who had saved her life.
“If I had heard the named of Frans and Mien Wijnakker before, it wouldn’t have meant anything to me,” Brounstein said. “But my wife had this great curiosity; she wanted to learn about her roots.”
The outpouring of joy and emotion by the arrival of “Baby Ineke” in the town was startling, Brounstein said.
“I was very moved by that initial response,” Brounstein said. “Family members arrived quickly after that and it led to a get-together. It was amazing. That initial visit led to (writing the book).”
Today, Baby Ineke, or Leah Baars as she is known today, lives in San Mateo with her husband, who never truly realized the sacrifices and dangers Frans and Mien had to overcome until that “family” gathering in Holland.
“These were extraordinary people in extraordinary circumstances,” said Brounstein. “As I learned things about the story, it became something I needed to put down in writing.
“And now, I’m an author on a mission. People are inspired by it.”
