Thomas Sijtsma’s great-grandmother said it every birthday: someone is missing. She meant Harry Davids, the little boy she and her husband had taken in in the Frisian Engwierum during the Second World War. There was little talk about it in the family: that would open old wounds. Jeltje Bakker-Woudsma and Berend Bakker had to give up Harry after a lost custody case in 1947. The boy went to his aunt and uncle in South Africa, the few family he had left after the war. Together with his uncle Harry, named after the person in hiding, Sijtsma delved into the family history.
The search for baby Harry in hiding: ‘My life story was like a puzzle’ | Inland
