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K.J. Dijkstra Profile picture
@shannara77
Apr 21, 2023 • 13 tweets • 8 min read • Read on X
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(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! Image

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More from @shannara77

K.J. Dijkstra Profile picture
Dec 16, 2022
@AuschwitzMuseum (1/n) This little 4 year 'old' boy was the brother of Eline Regina, born 04-09-1934 (8yr) and Frits Herman, born 18-11-1935 (7yr). They were the children of Salomon born 21-03-1910 and Mirjam Sara nee Micheels, born 02-11-1908.
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@AuschwitzMuseum (2/n) The family used to live in the Hague.
Parents, Max and Eline were in Westerbork from 25-09-1942 and were 3 days later deported to Auschwitz. They were most likely all gassed on arrival.😢

Frits Herman was not deported on that day.
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@AuschwitzMuseum (3/n) It turned out he was in 'het Apeldoornsche Bos'. This was a Jewish psychiatric institution in the forest near Apeldoorn. For a long time it was thought that the Nazis would leave the patients in Apeldoorn undisturbed and therefore would not deport them to Westerbork.
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Read 9 tweets
K.J. Dijkstra Profile picture
Dec 16, 2022
(1/n) In 1998 this picture was found when a picture frame was changed. It had been hidden there 60 years ago.
It shows 22 children, in the age of 4-17 year. It was made behind the synagogue in Deventer. Some children are wearing the dreadful star.
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(2/n) The photo came into the hands of Mr Meier de Leeuw. He is Jewish and was a child before the war and knew some of these children. He himself was already in hiding, otherwise he would have been on the photo
Meier started an investigation to find out more about the children
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(3/n) Finally it turned out that the photo must have been taken around the Jewish New Year (Rosh
Hashanah) that fell on September 12/13 in 1942. The children celebrated this day in the synagogue and youth shul.
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Read 16 tweets
K.J. Dijkstra Profile picture
May 7, 2022
@AuschwitzMuseum (1/n) It was 07-05-1934 when Leon (called Lonnie) Zwaap was born. He was the son of Salomon, born 03-01-1906 and Esther Jeannette Zwaap nee Philipse, born 15-02-1913. On 08-05-1936 Lonnie's brother Edward David (called Eddy) was born.
Both children were born in Hilversum.
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@AuschwitzMuseum (2/n) Salomon was a doctor while Esther was a childcare worker and a singer. They still lived in Hilversum.
In 1942 Salomon was a representative of the Jewish Council. This is probably why he was the first to be arrested.
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@AuschwitzMuseum (3/n) The first document shows that he was in Vught from 17-02-1943. The Jewish Council card shows the date 12-02-1943 with the handwritten text 'uit gevangenis' or 'out of prison'.
But he probably was in Westerbork somewhere in February.
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Read 7 tweets
K.J. Dijkstra Profile picture
Feb 14, 2022
@AuschwitzMuseum (1/n) Lia (📷1&2) was the daughter of Julius, who was a baker, born 15-01-1895 and Alice, born 14-05-1895. She had an older sister Rita, born 05-12-1924.
Julius was already deported to Nisko in Poland before the girls and there mother were deported to Theresienstadt.
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@AuschwitzMuseum (2/n) Lia, and her mother and sister were in Theresienstadt from 30-06-1943. And on 19-10-1944 they were all 3 deported to Auschwitz.

Rita was best friends with another Jewish girl, Vera Rosenzweig. Vera was in Theresienstadt from 30-09-1942, so before the Feiners.
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@AuschwitzMuseum (3/n) And while she was there Rita wrote her a card.
It says:
Hope to see you all, with all friends. I miss you all, and would rather be with you. Luckily I have a lot of work in the hospital. Stay healthy and greetings to all.

9 months later Rita was also in Theresienstadt.
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Read 7 tweets
K.J. Dijkstra Profile picture
Oct 24, 2021
(1/n) Andrée Geulen was a teacher in a school in Brussels. One day, summer of 1942 some of her students arrived at school with the compulsory yellow star on their clothes. Until that time Geulen hadn't paid attention to the anti-Jewish measures and the persecution of the Jews.
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(2/n) Having her students marked and humiliated in this way enraged Geulen, and she instructed the entire class – Jews and non-Jews alike - to wear aprons to school, so as to cover the yellow stars.
This first close encounter with the persecution of the Jews convinced...
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(3/n) ..Andrée that she had to act. While continuing to teach, she became an activist in the Comité de Défence des Juifs (Jewish Defense Committee), where Jews (like Ida Sterno) and non-Jews joined forces to hide and save Jewish children.
📷Andree with Ida Sterno
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Read 11 tweets
K.J. Dijkstra Profile picture
Sep 26, 2021
(1/n) While reading this book "De jodenvervolging in foto's" (The persecution of the Jews in photos) I read the story of Johannes, or Hannes, Boogaard and his family. Hannes was a deeply religious man, a farmer, who lived in Nieuw-Vennep. He was 75 when the war broke out.
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(2/n) He lived there with his sons Willem & Theunis and daughter Aagje. 2 of his 9 other children, sons Hannis & Piet, lived nearby.
The resistance of Hannes started early. He was told by the Germans to sow rapeseed, but he refused.
Early 1942 the first person came to hide.
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(3/n) More people would follow soon. Hiding places were made all over the yard. In a bomb shelter, in a hay stack, in a old car...
At some point around 70 people were hiding there. In the beginning this would lead to major problems getting enough food. They needed 280 kg..
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Read 10 tweets

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