The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust

by Gilbert, Martin

  A final home for Ilana and her sister was with Dirk and Neels van der Vaart. Their ‘sole motive’, Ilana writes, ‘was love of their fellow humans and hate of the German invaders. They were simple but wonderful people. They hid many other Jews for shorter or longer periods of time. One little boy stayed with them for almost three years. I remember how they celebrated my birthday. I knew when it was supposed to be, so they arranged a party for me with the children of the neighbours. They said it was my five and a half year birthday, because if they had told me the truth that I was six years old that day, I would have wanted to go to school. I remember the gift I got. It was a large ball sewn together from pieces of an old sheet, decorated with crayon drawings, filled with old newspapers. Of course it did not bounce, but one could throw and catch it. I stood in the middle of a circle and tossed the ball back to all the children around me. While they got one turn to throw, I got many—it was the happiest day of my life!’

  Ilana added: ‘My memories do not give sufficient credit to those wonderful heroes who risked their lives to save those of their fellow human beings. At the time I did not realize the danger they were exposed to and thus this is not reflected in the above. Now I know the enormous risks they took jeopardizing their lives and those of their family, but my story is that of a little girl who did not grasp the scope of the calamity.’52

  NEAR EIBERGEN, THE manager of the privately owned Hoones Forest allowed two Jewish brothers to build an underground hideout deep in the woods. Two non-Jewish builders brought the materials, dug the hole and assembled the shelter. It had two rooms and a primitive stove. Initially only the brothers hid there, but as times grew more desperate, twenty-three Jews were concealed in the bunker. On 27 March 1943 a Dutch informer led the Germans to the site. All twenty-three were arrested and sent to Westerbork. From there they were deported to Sobibor and killed. After the war the informer was identified and tried as a collaborator.53

  In Utrecht, Geertruida van Live and her companion Jet van Berlikom ran a home for children born out of wedlock. The home was under the protection of the city’s German commandant. This gave the couple the idea of a daring scheme: to take in Jewish babies as if they were Christian waifs. When a Jewish woman, Alida Natkiel, was ordered to report to the railway station for the journey to Westerbork, she took her one-year-old daughter Siny to the home. A local doctor, Hans Mayer, and his wife Nel, a nurse, volunteered to oversee the health care of the children in the home. The young couple had no children of their own and eventually adopted Siny, telling the Germans that Nel had given birth to Siny before her marriage. Siny remained with them from 1942 until the Natkiels returned to claim her in the autumn of 1945. Alida Natkiel and her husband both survived the war, unlike so many parents of children in hiding. Alida, having escaped deportation, had been hidden by the Beimer family in Friesland, but all twelve of her brothers and sisters had perished.54

  On 3 June 1945, less than a month after the end of the war in Europe, the New York Times reported that in the first days of liberation, an American soldier, Ernest Stock, on reaching the Dutch city of Utrecht, discovered his own father, Leo Stock. Ernest had managed to leave Europe for the United States in 1940, at the age of fifteen, with his mother and younger sister. On meeting his father in 1945, he learned how he had survived the war. ‘He says if it wasn’t for the wonderful helpfulness of the Dutch people there wouldn’t be a single Jew left up there.’55 To his wife, Leo Stock wrote of Henny Terlouw, who had hidden him for two and a half years, ‘I have been living here since 15.11.42 and can truly say that I ultimately owe my life to this extraordinarily brave woman.’56

  Jacoba van Tongeren had been born in the Dutch East Indies. In The Hague, she was active in local church affairs. She was also active in the Dutch resistance, as was her friend Dr Nicolette Bruining. It was Dr Bruining who first took under her wing a seventeen-year-old Dutch Jewish girl, Elisabeth Waisvisz (later Edna Heruthy), and her sister. Tante (Auntie) Co, as Elisabeth knew her, arranged a hiding place for her in Amsterdam until her false papers could arrive. ‘After that, Tante Co saw to it that I was included in a group of youngsters from Amsterdam, who through their church were sent to the north of Alkmaar for a “health vacation” of six weeks. Only the local minister knew about me.’

  After six weeks, at the beginning of September 1942, Edna Heruthy recalled, ‘Tante Co waited for me at the station of Alkmaar and we returned by train to Amsterdam. During the trip she explained to me that from now on I would live with her and her friend, Tante Nel, and that she had prepared for me a small attic-room. She added that my “new” identity card was being readied by a good friend of hers. All I had to do was go to a “safe” photographer for passport pictures. Due to Tante Co I received the best forged identity card one could hope for—a fact that subsequently saved my life many times over.’

  In December 1942 a member of the Dutch Nazi Party recognized Elisabeth when she was walking in the street: he had known her as a child, when she had bought her pencils and copy books in his shop. He was unable to catch her, as she was on a bicycle, and rode briskly away. But he immediately circulated her real name and description to the Dutch police. That evening, Edna Heruthy recalled, ‘a “good” policeman who happened to be a neighbour, informed my landlady that I had to leave Amsterdam immediately. Having no spare address outside Amsterdam, “Tante Co” advised me to go to my parents for a few days and disclosed where they were. I travelled that same evening—cold and dark—stayed with my (surprised but pleased) parents in The Hague until after a few days, at the beginning of January 1943, Dr Bruining came to take me to Hilversum.’

  In Hilversum, Jacoba Covens took the young girl to her own parents’ home in Baarn. Henricus and Maria Covens’s younger daughter Henriëtte, who worked in Amsterdam as a graphic artist and was also active in the resistance, came home at weekends. ‘I stayed with the Covens family for one and a half years,’ Edna Heruthy recalled, ‘during which time all of them took great risks on my behalf. Besides the parents who were already over sixty-five years old, grandmother Wijsman—over ninety years old—was living with them. Since both daughters were working, the task of finding additional food to add to our meagre rations fell on Mr Covens. The resistance provided me with the necessary ration-cards, but the Covens family never received money for my upkeep. They not only gave me a safe home, but also a loving one—which during those years was quite an exception.’

  When the German army requisitioned the Covenses’ villa, and moved them to a house next door, Henriëtte Covens took Elisabeth to The Hague, to stay for a while with her parents. ‘A week later she came back to pick me up. I still see her entering my parents’ room with an enormous bouquet of spring flowers for my mother in her arms! It was the last time I saw my parents.’ It was Dr Bruining who, one Sunday in April, ‘came straight from a church-service’, Edna wrote, ‘to me to tell me that my parents had been betrayed; first they were taken to Westerbork concentration camp in Holland and shortly afterwards to Sobibor. To our sorrow she had to repeat such black tidings about other dear ones many more times.’ Elisabeth’s mother and father were murdered at Sobibor on 28 May 1943.

  On their way back to Baarn, Henriëtte Covens told her charge that another problem awaited them there. The new villa was so big that the Germans had ordered another family to move in. ‘That family was unknown in the neighbourhood, and it was not certain that they could be trusted as far as my presence was concerned. As it turned out they were very friendly and helpful at critical moments, and to our relief they had no young children who in their innocence could have given the show away.’

  Jacoba Covens once took ‘an incredible (and additional) risk: in the summer of 1943, after my parents’ deportation, she decided to take me with her as a fourth “youth-leader” of a summer camp for Protestant youth which she directed near Arnhem. She wanted me to “be away from it all”, but the “Grüne”—the German Green Police—found the farm where the camp was held and inspected everybody present, childre
n, youth-leaders and all. My foolproof identity card saved the day! But for this unpleasant intrusion, those were truly wonderfully carefree weeks.’57

  AS IN EVERY country under German occupation, so in Holland, local priests played a major part in rescuing Jews. Cecile Kanner (later Kahn) was a schoolgirl at the time of the round-up of Jews in Amsterdam on 21 June 1942. From her home in Scheveningen she, her grandparents and her parents were ordered by the Germans to go to Amsterdam and report. Before they left, a priest arrived and took her away to a non-Jewish family in Oegstgeest, near Leiden. ‘The grandparents objected to my leaving; my father simply said, “I cannot protect her anymore”, and with a little bag of money around my neck and the frantic blessings of my grandfather I left with the priest.’58

  Cecile never learned the priest’s name. At Oegstgeest she was taken in by Frans and Maria Briër, a husband and wife with three young daughters, the youngest a baby. It had been intended for her to stay for just three days, but after the first day Maria Briër said to her: ‘Child, you can remain with us till the war is over.’ After a short while, Maria Briër went to Amsterdam to bring back Cecile’s parents, but they had already been arrested—in the street—and imprisoned. Once more Maria Briër returned to Amsterdam, to bring back Cecile’s grandparents, but when she reached their house she spotted German uniforms through the window. She almost fell into their hands herself.

  Not long afterwards, Cecile’s parents escaped from prison and made their way to Oegstgeest. ‘Mr Briër made three hiding places for us. For my father one under the roof, for my mother one under the ground floor, and for me under the staircase. Mrs Briër bought food with the ration coupons she received from the underground. The three of us were in a room on the first floor always ready to leave no trace and to run to our hiding places. Mr Briër took us sometimes for a walk at night. And so the days went on and on. Till one day an underground man came by the name of Reinier Kampenhout. He said to me, “You are too young to remain all day in one room.” He arranged an identity card by the name of Corry Verschoor, took me to a photographer and with this new identity brought me to an old age home in Heemstede (near Haarlem), where a maid was needed. From now on nobody knew who I really was until the end of the war. Kampenhout himself was caught by the Germans and killed.’59

  Cecile Kahn’s parents survived the war, having also been found another hiding place. Her grandparents were taken to Westerbork and then to Auschwitz, where they arrived on 31 August 1943. They were murdered there within three days.

  ‘It should be stressed that though I was assimilated, for Queen and Fatherland, with Dutch Christian friends aplenty,’ Cecile Kahn reflected, ‘it took a long time to find help. People were so fearful that they even declined to hide their own sons when the Germans ordered them to work in Germany. They were so fearful that all the family albums I gave a classmate were destroyed by her parents. Only with the prevailing fear in mind can the few righteous helpers be appreciated.’60

  The level of local support for the Jews varied from place to place. In the small town of Winterswijk, near the German frontier, hiding places were found for thirty-five Jews of the 270 who lived in the town. Eight miles away, at Aalten, of the eighty-five Jews of the town, fifty-one were hidden by non-Jews and survived the war.61 Albert Douwes took 120 Jewish children out of Amsterdam to the village of Nieuwlande, arranging for all of them to be hidden with the farmers of the village. All the children survived; many later settled in Israel, where their rescuer also lived for many years.62 Nieuwlande was later awarded, as a village, the designation Righteous Among the Nations.63

  Acts of individual rescue have been recorded in Holland on virtually every day of the war. Gustel Mozes, a Jewish teenager who had left Germany for Holland after Kristallnacht, found refuge in Roermond with the Roman Catholic Thomassen family, which had twelve children, six of whom were still living at home. Two of the daughters went to meet Gustel Mozes at the train station: the family had let it be known that she was the new seamstress. ‘The very first thing she had to learn was to make the sign of the cross! That, because next day, a seamstress was expected, and Gustel should not arouse any suspicion by not knowing how to make the sign of the Cross, during dinner times. During the day she never left the house. She also had to learn to eat non-Kosher food. The family had good relations with the bishop, who knew about Gustel’s Jewishness. The secretary of the bishop, called Pief van Odyk, visited the family every day. Two other Jews were also introduced into the family. Gustel stayed with the family Thomassen until the liberation. She called the mother, Maria, “mother”, and was surrounded by love.’64

  A Christian Dutch woman, Jo Jansen, persuaded her mother, Klaasje Geuzebroek-Zein, to go to the Dutch authorities and bear false witness that a Jewish friend, Helena de Vries, was her illegitimate daughter. Had the deception been found out, mother and daughter would have faced severe punishment, possibly death. So too would Helena and her children. The young Maurits de Vries, who was saved, with his mother, sister and twin brother, as a result of this deception about their parentage, has written of Jo Jansen: ‘Her motive for saving us must have been purely humane and humanitarian, she was not religious, hated the Nazis.’65

  The question of motive, and of character, is one on which almost all of those who were saved often reflect. ‘I must mention’, writes Jehoedah Troostwijk, one of those who was saved, ‘that all our rescuers were holding us without making any special profit out of it. They were all heroes for humanity reasons, they never tried to convert us or something of the kind.’ Among those ‘heroes’ were Adriaan and Annie van Eerd-Mutsaers. Adriaan was captain of a football team, Annie the daughter of an archbishop.

  To save and to destroy: as always the dark side lurked. Jehoedah Troostwijk also remembered that it was a Dutch policeman who arrested one of his brothers, Menno, a former soldier in the Dutch army, who was deported to Sobibor. There he took part with other former soldiers in the death camp revolt, and was shot.66

  Yet one of the heroes was another Dutch policeman, Constable Gerrit van der Putten, who found himself present during a deportation. Among the Jews to be deported from Utrecht that day, 14 March 1943, were Caroline Kanes and her tiny baby Levie, who had been born less than two months earlier, on January 25. More than half a century later, Levie Kanes set down what he had pieced together of his story. As he described it: ‘Gerrit could not remember seeing such poverty-stricken people before; he had never seen so many in such a state of complete indignity. Everywhere he could hear children crying as their mothers were told they would be sent to a labour camp. Mothers clung to their babies in desperation as they realized how little value a small child would be to a camp where they would all be expected to “labour”, and they all worried about what this could mean as to the fates of their children.’

  As Gerrit van der Putten watched, he saw Grietje Verduin, a nurse he knew from the resistance, enter the railway car and look towards Caroline Kanes and her baby son. Levie Kanes’s account continues: ‘Caroline approached her immediately. She whispered, “Please smuggle my baby out of here, he will die if he comes with me!!” Grietje had no idea who Caroline was, and she could not determine how she had known it was safe to approach her about the baby, but Caroline knew who was “safe” because of her own work in the resistance…Grietje saw that the police were busy bringing the new passengers on board. Wordlessly she picked up the baby and hid him in her basket of clean gauze and wound dressings. Before Caroline could even think to be grateful to her, Grietje left the train. Caroline ran back to the window to try and follow the nurse’s movements through the crowds at the station. She watched as Grietje put the basket into a Dutch policeman’s arms, then turned away to be lost among the people surrounding her. The last Caroline saw of the baby, and the police officer, was what she saw before he disappeared into the shadows of the nearby buildings.’

  Kanes’s account continued: ‘Gerrit realized he had a living baby in the basket, and snapped to attention. He went into action.
He moved quickly away from the train and back into the shadows of the buildings behind him. He tried to be as natural as possible with his cargo, so as not to bring attention to himself during his rescue. The whistle blew and the train pulled out of the station before Gerrit judged that he had covered enough distance to allow himself to catch his breath. He had to think fast: he would leave by the gate behind the buildings that were guarded by his colleagues. Not all of the other policemen were “trustworthy” men these days, so he knew he had to be extremely cautious. He spotted Hank Janssen at the gate, and allowed himself to feel a small amount of relief.’

  Hank Janssen was a Dutch police officer Gerrit had known for a long time: ‘He would never think twice about seeing him carry a basket home from work. Gerrit took a deep breath and walked by Hank and the control while holding the basket close to him as he passed. He saluted, and said, “Hello, Hank!” Hank saluted back and watched him walk away. Gerrit smiled merrily as he kept moving toward his bike, and announced, “I must be getting too busy—I forgot my laundry yesterday!” as he motioned to the basket with his eyes. Hank smiled and immediately went back to his other duties while Gerrit walked toward his bicycle, a few metres from the train station, where he would be free of the suspicions of his colleagues. Gerrit tied the basket firmly on the back of his bike, as if it truly was just a basket full of clothing, then rode quickly away.’