For the final blog in this series, I honor a hero and heroine of my book, Escape from Amsterdam. As a fiction writer, the main hero and heroine are often working madly to overcome obstacles and trials in their lives while also cultivating their relationship. So it is in Escape from Amsterdam with Helen and Erik. But instead of focusing on the fictitious, I want to focus on the real-life hero and heroine within its pages –
Professor Johan van Hulst and Miss Henriette Pimentel.
Each of these remarkable people performed incredible feats during the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands during World War II. One was the president of a teacher’s college, the other the director of a nursery or crèche as it was called. Both found themselves thrust into difficult circumstances as their institutions lie within the Jewish Quarter. The area became cordoned off by the Nazis and eventually led to the deportation of the Jews in a theater across the street from their establishments.
At the theater, however, there was a third team player mentioned briefly in the book, Walter Suskind. He was responsible for creating lists of the Jewish people that came into the theater. In his capacity, he was able to destroy the cards of Jewish children. Why was this important? Because without the card the Germans would not know to call the child back to the theater from the crèche once the family was summoned to be deported. So when a child ended up with Miss Pimentel whose card had been destroyed with the parent’s permission, those in the Resistance and others in secret organizations were able to take the child away to farms and safe places in the country. Over 600 children were saved in this way. Miss Pimentel and Professor Von Hulst often worked together to help take children away. Because they shared an adjoining wall between their respective buildings, little children were hoisted over the wall into the college backyard where the professor kept them until people could take them to safe places.
When the Nazis finally discovered the plan, raids were conducted. Miss Pimentel and her staff were arrested and eventually sent to Auschwitz where they died.
For Professor van Hulst, he decided to take children with him and flee. He already had many to care for and that final day proved the most agonizing of his life. That day, he could only select 12 to take with him. He knew those children left behind would face certain death. And he was quoted as saying, “I took 12. Why not 13?”
Escape from Amsterdam immortalizes the words and actions of these heroic people and countless others unnamed who saved so many children from the death camps in Poland. May we never forget their sacrifice.
