Arnold Douwes and Seine Otten

Seine, his wife and Arnold Douwes were part of a network of 250 in the town of Nieuwlande, the Netherlands that found and provided shelter for hundreds of Jews in persecution in Europe.

Arnold Douwes and Otten Seine from the town of Nieuwlande believed strongly in the Bible, and opposed Hitler’s plans for murdering the Jews. Their involvement in the Resistance stemmed from a response to injustice. They admired the Jews they helped for the courage they showed while in hiding. The entire town of Nieuwlande was honored by Yad Vashem in Israel.

Arnold Douwes worked guided by Johannes Post, who was an important underground person who helped Jews, but Johhannes was shot by the Nazis. Arnold Douwes widened the view of his guider's rescue missions. He focused on the town of Nieuwlande, in Drenthe. There, almost every house sheltered a Jewish person to hide from the Nazis. Arnold Douwes looked after all the needs of these Jews in hiding, helping them with food and other basic needs, false papers, and support through the underground.

Seine Otten was born in 1910. He had seven brothers and sisters. His father was a farmer and they belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church. He became a teacher and got married in 1938. He was teaching in the Christian school at Nieuwlande. When he realized Jews would be persecuted, he told them, "When you are in need, you may come to Nieuwlande."

Seine Otten said “Perhaps ten or twenty years from now when we are no longer alive there won't be articles in the paper every week about the war, perhaps then the war will be forgotten. But not yet.”

Both Seine Otten and Arnold Douwes are highly honored at Yad Vashem. They have put so much effort into saving peoples lives. They knew if they were caught, then they would die with the others, but they didn’t care. They knew that they were very largely known in the world. They put risk for themselves by saving others lives that they didn’t know. They thought about what Adolf Hitler was doing and tried to save the innocent people that were being persecuted in internment camps so that they could go and still live through the Holocaust and live to tell about their trouble so that it wouldn’t happen again.

References Used
Museum of Tolerance,
http://motlc.learningcenter.wiesenthal.org/text/x00/xm0022.html It tells about Arnold Douwes and Seine Otten's personal experiences about World War II

http://motlc.learningcenter.wiesenthal.org/pages/t065/t06540.html It tells about Arnold Douwes and Seine Otten and what they did to save lives during World War II