These Dutch Holocaust Survivors Have Been Madly in Love for 70 Years

After the Holocaust robbed these two survivors of most of their loved ones, they found new love in each other. In a new documentary, we learn more about their romance that has lasted a lifetime.

Throughout the hourlong film titled “Tedje & Meijer: The Promise of Love,” the two nonagenarians hug, kiss, rub noses and joke as they sit with their arms intertwined, each spouse with one palm on the other’s knee. They call each other “poepie,” or “sweetie” in Dutch, among other terms of endearment...

“As long as I see Tedje around I’m happy, I’m glad,” Meijer says in the documentary. “Tedje has made me complete.”

While the couple love their children, their love for each other “was so strong, so intense” when the kids were growing up “that there was actually no space for anyone else between them. Not even their children,” Mirjam says.

But what begins as a documentary about the effects of an unusual family relationship evolves into an exploration into the tragic root of the special bond between the spouses — and the tragedy’s effects on at least two generations of Dutch Jews.

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