Memories of my Amsterdam sister or brother

During the war years 1943-1944, about 123 Jewish children were smuggled out of Amsterdam and placed with families in northern Limburg. Much is already known about how these children experienced their time in hiding. Research has also been done into the reactions of the children from the Limburg host families to the stay in their midst of the young people in hiding. To support and supplement this research, this interview project has included interviews with individuals who, at the time, received an Amsterdam “brother or sister” as a child. The interviews reveal how they experienced the arrival of these strange children in the family. It becomes clear what it was like for them to suddenly have to share their parents with young Jewish people in hiding who were taken into their family as housemates.

The Jewish children – mostly from the nursery opposite the Hollandsche Schouwburg – were smuggled out of the capital by an Amsterdam student resistance group led by Piet Meerburg. In northern Limburg, the hiding organization for the children was in the hands of Hanna van de Voort, a midwife from Tienray. She received help in her resistance work from the young Nijmegen student Nico Dohmen, who had gone into hiding in Tienray because he had not signed the declaration of loyalty.