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Cover Story From Holland to Hoboken, the Stars are the Same

By Gabriele Amersbach

Louis Meevers-Scholte was born in a windmill in a small Dutch village in 1934. Eventually both Meevers-Scholte and the windmill would end up in America, bearing scars of a war that defined his childhood.

Yet, relying on his faith and wits, Meevers-Scholte not only survived but thrived in dark times that would crush many. His life is a living embodiment of his personal philosophy: “Life is what you make it — it’s your choice how you live it.”

In 1940, when MeeversScholte was 5, Nazi Germany took over the country, a dark period of violence and repression, especially against the Jewish population. Only 38,000 of the 140,000 Jews in the Netherlands survived violence and deportation to death camps.

Meevers-Scholte’s family was not spared. Soldiers shot into his home (one can find six bullet holes in the windmill, which now rests in Holland, Michigan, a gift from Queen Beatrix of Holland in 1955).

During the five-year occupation, MeeversScholte and a gang of other boys joined the underground resistance. He tells of hiding underneath a train loaded with families heading for the death camps. When the train started, the boys climbed up the cars to the section where the engine was coupled to the rest of the train.

Meevers-Scholte describes their heart-stopping maneuver: “We stabbed the guard and uncoupled the engine from the cars. The people in the cars were then able to run away. A lot of people’s lives were saved.”

The group of boys also found creative ways to steal food to deliver to starving Dutch families — and to Jewish families in hiding, including Anne Frank in Amsterdam.

“We were all hungry, every one of us,” says

Meevers-Scholte, explaining his stomach was distended from starvation. He tells a chilling tale of chopping down a pine tree to cook and eat the bark. As he dragged the tree home, someone grabbed it. Meevers-Scholte, age 9, told him, “I’ll chop off your hand if you don’t let go.” The hand came home with the tree. “I had nightmares for years about that day,” he says. Despite these deprivations, the family survived until the last day of the war in 1945. Enemy soldiers rounded up his father, who was Jewish, and 13 other men. They were massacred, while their families were forced to watch. Meevers-Scholte was also injured. As he drew what he thought would be his last breath, “Jesus came into my soul,” he explains. “I know I’m never alone.” He had found a lifelong spiritual belief that has sustained him through many hardships. After the massacre, Meevers-Scholte knew he had to leave in order to survive. At age 10, he stole away, skating down Louis Meevers-Scholte, here and on the cover, in a few of his self-made Santa Claus ensembles, each representing a different country of origin. the long canal out of his village, with only a flashlight and a bottle of the pergola and all its seasonal decorations are water. also his own construction and design. Eventually he reached Belgium, just one of several countries in war-torn Europe he would pass through on his way to America, his final destination. Meevers-Scholte found ways to survive, from working on farms to selling abandoned newspapers he found in train stations. In France, he briefly slept in the Eiffel Tower. The swaying of the tower made him seasick, so he moved on to an elevator in the Arc de Triomphe. “I liked that better,” says Meevers-Scholte. “It was warm.” Eventually he reached Spain. There, MeeversScholte begged for food at restaurants or hung out near the bullfight rings. After the bull was killed, poor people were able to divide up the meat.

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