A dog, then large groups of well dressed people walking in Sonsbeek Park on a pathway next to massive flowerbeds of various colors. This was the first time that flower bulbs were planted in Sonsbeek, which merited the purchase of color film by Meijer de Groot. This was the only color film he made. Sophia de Groot walks the dog, another dog runs up to join it. Meijer then walks the same dog. The dog runs off, and Louis, his sister Rachel, mother Sophia, and Eva Haller (a Kindertransport girl from Vienna who stayed with the de Groots) walk towards the camera. Two dogs begin to play in front of them. 01:01:44 LS, the famous and very popular waterfall in Sonsbeek Park. MS, pond and the reflection of the trees in it. A swan swims through the middle. Louis with the family dog on a rock overlooking the pond, where there was a footbridge.
De Groot family visits Sonsbeek Park in spring 1939
Meijer de Groot (1897-1944) and his wife Sophia Swaab de Groot (1900-1944) owned a hardware and electrical appliance store on Rijnstraat in the city of Arnhem, The Netherlands. After being warned of a forthcoming round-up of Jews, the de Groot family left their home in Arnhem to go into hiding in November 1942. Louis (b. 1929) and his sister, Rachel (1927-1944), hid in several dozen places throughout the Netherlands. Rachel eventually joined her parents at their hiding place in Amsterdam, while Louis made it to the home of Dirk and Ann Onderweegs in Lemmer in January 1944. Rachel and her parents were denounced on April 8, 1944, arrested by a Dutch policeman who was a childhood friend of Meijer's, and sent first to Westerbork and then to Auschwitz where they perished. Louis stayed with the Onderweegs until August 1946 when he entered the Jewish Boys Orphanage in Amsterdam. He fought for Israel in 1948, briefly returned to Holland, and emigrated to the United States in 1950, where he married and had two sons. Eva Haller, a girl from Vienna who stayed with the de Groot family on a Kindertransport to Holland, survived the war in hiding in Holland. She eventually settled in Nahariya, Israel where she raised a family and lived until the early 2000s.
See also RG-60.4836 and RG-60.4844 for similar footage of Sonsbeek Park in black and white. For more artifacts related to the de Groot family, see USHMM collections with accession numbers 2003.155 and 2009.341