A True Story of Heroism During the Holocaust: Dutch Resistance Movement in WW2 (2001)

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Jaap (pronounced "yahp") Penraat (April 11, 1918 – June 25, 2006) was a Dutch resistance fighter during the Second World War. Penraat was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands. As a child, he helped Jewish neighbors by switching lights for them on Shabbat, which they were forbidden to do. When the Nazis occupied The Netherlands and began acting against the Jews, Penraat was an interior designer, architect and sculptor of tiles and statues. He started his resistance activities by forging identity papers for Jews, but was discovered and jailed for several months. Later he made over 20 trips smuggling a total of 406 Jewish people to safety from The Netherlands to Spain via France by using his forgery skills to convince the Nazis they were slave laborers for the Atlantic Wall, on France's Atlantic coast. He lost only one man, who was hit by a train. Penraat was tortured by the Nazis but revealed nothing about his operations. After his release, he continued his activities until 1944, when it became too risky to continue, and he spent the rest of the war hiding in a village, living on sugar beets. After the war, Penraat became a noted designer in Amsterdam, until in 1958 he moved to the United States. In 1964, he designed the Dutch mill cafe, for the New York World's Fair. He remained silent about his wartime activities until his daughters convinced him that his grandchildren should know about them. He went on to describe his experiences to school groups. In subsequent interviews, he insisted he had only "done the decent thing". Yad Vashem, the official Israeli memorial to victims of the Holocaust, awarded him the designation of Righteous Among the Nations and put him on its honor roll on June 11, 1988. A longtime friend of Penraat's, Hudson Talbott, authored a children's book about Penraat's activities, entitled Forging Freedom: A True Story of Heroism During the Holocaust. Talbott said in an interview that Penraat "just loved the idea of putting one over on the Nazis".[1] Penraat died at his home in Catskill, New York at the age of 88, three years following the death of his wife, Jettie. He is survived by his three daughters, Marjolijn, Mir, and Noelle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaap_Penraat The Dutch resistance to the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands during World War II can be mainly characterized by its prominent non-violence, peaking at over 300,000 people in hiding in the autumn of 1944, tended to by some 60,000 to 200,000 illegal landlords and caretakers and tolerated knowingly by some one million people, including German occupiers and military.[1] Dutch resistance developed relatively slowly, but the event of the February strike and its cause, the random police harassment and deportation of over 400 Jews, greatly stimulated resistance. The first to organize themselves were the Dutch communists, who set up a cell-system immediately. Some other very amateurish groups also emerged, notably De Geuzen, set-up by Bernard IJzerdraat and also some military-styled groups started, such as the Ordedienst ('order service'). Most had great trouble surviving betrayal in the first two years of the war. Dutch counterintelligence, domestic sabotage, and communications networks eventually provided key support to Allied forces, beginning in 1944 and continuing until the Netherlands was fully liberated. Some 75% (105,000 out of 140,000) of the Jewish population perished in the Holocaust, most of them murdered in Nazi death camps.[2] A number of resistance groups specialized in saving Jewish children, including the Utrechtse Kindercomité, the Landelijke Organisatie voor Hulp aan Onderduikers, the Naamloze Vennootschap (NV), and the Amsterdam Student Group.[3] The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust estimates that 215-500 Dutch Romanis were killed by the Nazis, with the higher figure estimated as almost the entire pre-war population of Dutch Romanis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_resistance