Jacob “Jaap” Groen lived with a positive outlook, reminding others never to take freedom for granted.
An accomplished gymnast when the Nazis captured him, Groen’s mental and physical toughness helped him survive the Holocaust.
With a little education and a lot of gumption, he later moved from Europe to America and built a successful advertising career while using his experiences to encourage others to resist hate and promote peace.
“Jaap was a great communicator,” said his friend and former dentist Larry Golsen of Alpharetta. “His forte was educating young people. He left you feeling good and with a desire to make things better. He wanted all people to have a chance at justice and equality.”
Groen of McCaysville, Ga., died May 29 at the age of 90. A celebration of his life will be held at a later date.
An only child, Groen was born in 1925 in Antwerp, Belgium, and grew up in The Netherlands. He came from a long line of diamond cutters. His father had hoped his son would follow in the family profession, but Groen had other interests.
After Nazi Germany’s occupation of Holland in 1940, Groen and his family went into hiding with the help of his future wife Rie Van Voorthuyzen.
Groen worked for the Dutch underground as a cook and made fake IDs for Jewish citizens. He managed to avoid capture until a schoolmate, who had become a Dutch Nazi, recognized him and turned him in.
In 1941, 16-year-old Groen was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland where, for the next three years, he endured cruel and inhumane conditions, including experimentation by Nazi physician Josef Mengele, nicknamed the “Angel of Death.”
In 1945, he was forced on an infamous death march to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, where he worked 12-hour days in rock quarries. During the final days of World War II, he was sent to Austria’s Ebensee death camp where he subsisted on tree bark and was near death when American soldiers liberated the camp in May of 1945 and took him to an Army hospital at the Linz airport.
Although considered too weak to fly at 65 pounds, Groen sneaked onto a plane headed to Paris, where he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent three weeks in the hospital. He then flew home to Holland and was bedridden for more than a year. He reunited with his parents and married Van Voorthuyzen in 1947. They had one child. She died in 2007.
Groen and his family moved to Atlanta in 1957. His first job was as a window dresser at Rich’s department store. He later worked as an advertising executive at Citizens Jewelry and as vice president of advertising and marketing for the catalog merchant Ellman’s.
In 1985, he started his own advertising business. One of his clients was Home Depot, for which he and a colleague created the iconic Homer D. Poe.
“He embraced the American dream. He loved America,” said his son Phillip Groen of Acworth. “He did not have much money when he first came here. He had no formal schooling. From his sheer force of life, he made a career.”
He loved a challenge and brought creativity and excitement to every project, said his friend and former client Walter Sommers of Atlanta, whose family operated a jewelry wholesale business.
Groen convinced Sommers to let him build a marketing campaign around some pricey replica antique jewelry. Groen dubbed it the Scarlett collection. Customers loved it.
After retirement, he and his wife moved to McCaysville, where he volunteered his marketing skills at the Blue Ridge Arts Association.
He had a deep appreciation of art, music and family. He particularly enjoyed classical music and could play favorites on the keyboard and harmonica by ear.
His charisma and energizing presence came through in his speeches about the Holocaust to adults and school groups. He wasn’t out to gain sympathy for the horrors he endured but to remind people that freedom is a precious human right.
“There was an aura about him,” said Rabbi Yossi New, regional director of the Chabad of Georgia. “In spite of everything he went through, he still projected optimism, love of life and people.”
In addition to his son Phillip, Groen is survived by his wife Patricia Groen of McCaysville; son Jeff Johnson of Atlanta; six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
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