Skip to content
Navigating a New Political Landscape: View real-time updates about the impact of and Northeastern's response to recent political changes.
Apply
Stories

Northeastern student and Gideon Klein Scholar kicks off Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week with “solo biographical performance”

image of andie weiner presenting to audience with folder in hand

“Everything you will hear today is true—the events and the stories.” That’s how Andie Weiner, the 2024 Holocaust Legacy Foundation Gideon Klein Scholar, prefaced her presentation at the kick off of Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week at Northeastern University.

The presentation, also her capstone project, was a “solo biographical performance” that told the story of how her grandfather, Jack or “Joop” Groothuis, escaped the Netherlands as it was under Nazi occupation and fled to the United States. A fourth-year theater and psychology major at Northeastern, Weiner chronicled how her great-grandmother, Helen Copenhagen Groothuis, hid her grandfather—then an infant—with a local Christian family following the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. 

In 1946, Jack was reunited with his mother and they moved to New York to live with her sister, Marjana (Marian) Schechter, Weiner said. The Cabral Center at the John D. O’Bryant African American Institute, where Weiner presented on Monday, became a makeshift exhibit displaying historical photographs and artifacts from the time period. 

“I’ve always been interested in survivor stories as the primary mode of storytelling and education about the Holocaust,” Weiner told the audience. “Throughout my life, I’ve been doing research and learning about this, and this opportunity was presented to me as a way to really connect the family history.” Weiner detailed her grandfather’s story in a Northeastern Global News article in advance of Holocaust Remembrance Day in January.

Read more at Northeastern Global News.

More Stories

Police responders at the aftermath of Swedish school shooting.

Sweden’s deadliest mass shooting highlights global reality of gun violence, Northeastern criminologist says

02.05.2025
Huthi fighters stand guard around newly-released Yemeni prisoners wait to be united with their relatives, in Sanaa on January 25, 2025. (Photo by Mohammed HUWAIS / AFP) (Photo by MOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP via Getty Images)

Northeastern students wanted information on the Yemen conflict. So they went straight to the ambassador.

02.05.2025
The Center for International Affairs and World Cultures hosts a panel with a pair of scholars on the future of the Middle East peace process. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University

After ceasefire deal, how can mediators create a lasting peace in Gaza? Experts unravel the task

02.05.25
All Stories