Tasja Tomassen, 78, has worked as a barber in The Hague since she was 15 and still runs her own shop.
Her mother was born in what is now Ukraine and was deported to Treblinka at 18 after being betrayed.
She was about to enter the gas chamber when the women were ordered back onto a train and taken to a forced labour camp in Berlin.
Her parents met in Berlin
There, Tomassen’s mother met her father, Chris, who had been deported from the Netherlands to work as a forced labourer.
After the war, they came to the Netherlands, married and had two children, but later moved to the Soviet Union when Tomassen was seven.
The family spent five years there, where food and clean water were scarce, before returning to the Netherlands because her father struggled to adapt.
A career in hairdressing
Her father opened a barbershop after their return, and Tomassen began working with him at 15 while studying hairdressing at evening school.
She has now been in the trade for nearly 65 years and plans to celebrate with her customers in about a year and a half.
