Milton Nieuwsma
Milton J. Nieuwsma is a two-time Emmy Award-winning writer, journalist and filmmaker noted for his work on the Holocaust and American history. His 1998 book Kinderlager, an account of three young concentration camp survivors, has been acclaimed as one of the top 10 books written on the Holocaust.
Nieuwsma was born September 5, 1941 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the son of a Dutch Reformed minister. In 1945, after World War II, his family moved to Bellflower, California. At the age of 5, he met Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch-born concentration camp survivor and author of The Hiding Place whose family had hidden Jews in their Netherlands home during the war. Ten Boom was a guest at the Nieuwsma parsonage in Bellflower. In a 2001 interview, Nieuwsma recalled “sitting on (ten Boom’s) lap…listening to her talk and wondering to myself, ‘who is this woman.’ She reminded me of my grandmother.” Ten Boom inspired him to learn more about the Holocaust
Nieuwsma started his writing career as a reporter at the Holland (Michigan) Evening Sentinel while in high school. After graduating with an English degree from Hope College in 1963, he worked as a public information officer at Wayne State University and hosted a weekly radio program, “The Fifth Freedom,” on WQRS-FM, a Detroit fine arts station.
In 1969 Nieuwsma began a series of public relations and fundraising jobs that took him away from his first love, writing, for the next decade. In the late 1970s he began contributing historical features and travel articles to the Chicago Tribune. In 1978 he received a master’s degree in literature and communication at the University of Illinois-Springfield. A year later he became a vice president of Grand Hospital in Chicago and continued to write for the Chicago Tribune. In 1990 he took an administrative position at New Brunswick Seminary in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and taught journalism at Rutgers University.
While in New Brunswick, Nieuwsma met Tova Friedman, believed to be the youngest survivor of Auschwitz, which inspired him to write Kinderlager. Friedman is one of three children featured in the book. In 2001 Kinderlager was selected by the Hogere Europese Beroepen Opleiding (Institute for Higher European Education) in The Hague as one of the top 10 books on the Holocaust.
In 2005 the book was reissued under the title Surviving Auschwitz: Children of the Shoah as a companion to a PBS documentary of the same name, which Nieuwsma wrote and co-produced. Released in 2005, the film received an Emmy Award from the Michigan chapter of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences for best historical documentary. Nieuwsma won a second Emmy in 2006 for writing and co-producing Defying Hitler, a documentary about a Jewish fighter in the Polish Resistance.
Nieuwsma is also the writer and creator of the popular PBS series Inventing America: Conversations with the Founders (released in 2016). In addition to writing Kinderlager, he is the author of Surviving Auschwitz: Children of the Shoah (2005); Inventing America: Conversations with the Founders (2020), Miracle on Chestnut Street: The Untold Story of Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence (2021), and Dateline: World—20 Dispatches from the Earth and One from Hell (2023).
Since 1997 Nieuwsma has lived in Holland, Michigan. In 2001, he co-founded the Amicus Group, a consulting firm. In 2009, Hope College honored him with a Distinguished Alumni Award. He and his wife, Marilee, have three children, Jonathan, Greg and Elizabeth, and seven grandchildren.
Updated August, 2026. Sources: Who’s Who in America (60th ed., 2006); Who’s Who in the World (23rd ed., 2006); Contemporary Authors (vol. 213, 2004);Chicago Tribune (Jan. 30, 2005); Grand Rapids Press (Apr. 25, 2006); Holland Sentinel (Nov. 4, 2001). For critical reviews of Nieuwsma’s work see Contemporary Authors (vol. 213, 2004, pp. 306-307); Something About the Author (vol. 142, 2004, pp 140-141).