Yad Vashem honors Dutch couple for hiding Jews in attic during Holocaust

[Behind the Aegis]

Source: Ha'aretz

No matter what, nobody enters the attic." This was the unbreakable rule that defined the childhood of 75-year-old Albert Johan Reeders from Amersfoort, Holland. On Wednesday, his parents will posthumously be awarded Yad Vashem's highest honor, for harboring two Jews whom they hadn't previously known for three years during the Holocaust.

Israel's national Holocaust museum decided to name André Reeders and Aaltje Reeders-Wittermans as Righteous among the Nations for taking Sally and Claire Gimnicher-Hirsch - a married couple - into their home near Amsterdam in 1942, at the request of the Dutch resistance movement.

Unlike most cases involving Dutch households taking in persecuted Jewish families, the two families had had no prior knowledge of each other. Yad Vashem's inquiry into the case showed that their cohabitation through strife, occupation and want led to an unusual friendship which lasted long after the war.

"My parents had about two hours to decide whether to take in this couple," said Abert Reeders. He will accept the award for his parents, who died more than twenty years ago.

The Reeders had five children. If caught harboring the Gimnichers, the entire family might have met a curt execution by German soldiers. The parents told their children never to let anyone from outside the family into the attic, where the Gimnichers were living.


Read more: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1143647.html

[aquart]

1. I hope they had long, fulfilling lives and peaceful, painless deaths.

[EFerrari]

2. Thank you for posting this.

It renews faith in humanity.

[LeftishBrit]

3. k&r; good to be reminded of good and brave people.

[leftynyc]

4. What a brave couple

Risking their own lives for strangers. May they rest in peace and may their son always remember how special his parents were.

[Jefferson23]

5. The label of hero and brave have been so over used in the last 8

years by Bush/Cheney, and on some level the significance of the meaning has been undermined imo.

This story and others like it are the real deal, brave and heroic action, placing their own lives and that of their loved one at risk to do the right thing.

[Berry Cool]

6. K&R for the honoring of truly great people

who probably, like so many at the time who did what they did, probably thought they were only doing what anyone in their place would have done.