(1/n) 127 years ago Truus Meijer was born on 21-04-1896. This time not a victim of the Nazi's but a brave woman who stood up against them.
And by doing that she saved more than 10.000 Jewish children.
And the sad thing is that so many people, even Dutch, never heard of her.
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(2/n) Truus, who was born as Geertruida, was married to Franciscus Wijsmuller and so became known as Truus Wijsmuller.
It starts in 1933, when Hitler came to power. She travels to Germany to pick up relatives of Jewish acquaintances.
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(3/n) A few days after kristallnacht she travels to the Dutch-German border to see what is happening there. She takes a Yiddish-speaking Polish boy, under her skirts, to Amsterdam.
November 1938, the British government decides they will take Jewish children for temporary stay
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(4/n) So, on 02-12-1938, she is invited to visit the new Dutch Childrens Committee.
They ask her to go to Vienna to meet a certain Dr. Eichmann. As she is a woman, Eichmann at first snaps at her, but she meets him undaunted.
His reaction: 100% Aryan and yet so crazy.
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(5/n) Eichmann thinks he is setting her an impossible task by giving her permission to travel with 600 children within five days on "Shabbat". Truus immediately went to the station to reserve trains.
The parents, the Jewish organizations and Wijsmuller succeeded...🕯️❤️🕯️
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(6/n) They get 600 children to leave Vienna on Saturday 10 December. 500 children travelled via Hoek van Holland to England (📷map); the other 100 were accommodated in a school in The Hague and stayed in the Netherlands.
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(7/n) Between December 1938 and the outbreak of WW2 she organizes trips, several times a week, with children from the Nazi area.
Mostly to the Uk, but also to the Netherlands and later to Belgium and France.
She was involved, as a director of the Amsterdam Burgerweeshuis...
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(8/n) ..an orphanage, where German refugee children are housed.
The children call her 'auntie Truus'
In May 1942 she is arrested. The Gestapo suspects her of smuggling false identity papers for Dutch Jews to help them escape. But they can't proof anything, so she is released.
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(9/n) She is known to the Germans as "die verrückte Frau Wijsmuller" (the crazy Wijsmuller woman), because she helps Jews, for free.
In 1943 she arranges that all children in #Westerbork receive a package at christmas.
The list of her actions goes on and on.
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(10/n) Her reaction after the war:
"What I did was not enough. It was only about ten thousand children. How many millions died after that?"
The English Wikipedia page aboutTruus:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geertruid…
… Story in The times of Isreal: timesofisrael.com/truus-wijsmull…
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(11/n) In 2017 a documentary called "Truus' children" has been made about her and the children she saved. Several of the children she saved, and were still alife, have been interviewed.
Trailer: …
📷Truus and Otto Frank (father of Anne and Margot)
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(12/n) There are statues erected for her and for the children transports.
Streets have been named after her...
A bridge has been named after her...
In 1966 she was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.
righteous.yadvashem.org/?search=wijsmu…
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(13/13) But, in spite of all of this, so many (TOO many), have never heard of Truus and what she did to save all those children!
TRUUS WIJSMULLER!
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