The Other Schindlers (23 page)

Claire’s family, like so many others, paid heavily for their involvement in the Resistance, with the death of her grandmother, the premature death of her mother and the murder of her brother. However, it is impossible to know how many people were saved by their Resistance work. Claire and I appeared on BBC Radio 4’s
Woman’s Hour
to talk about her story and other Holocaust rescuers on 6 January 2005, and she participated in the national Holocaust Memorial Day event in Cardiff in 2006 and was introduced to Tony and Cherie Blair.

Jacob (1881–1953) and Hendrika (1889–1971) Klerk
. Henri Obstfeld, who now lives in London, was left with a couple called the Klerks in Arnhem in 1942 when he was 2½ years old. He stayed with them until he was 5. He does not know how contact was established with the Klerks and neither did their adopted daughter Els Willemsen, with whom he was in regular contact until she died in January 2003 aged 87. She was married in 1942 and the Klerks, who were then in their fifties, were left with a large, virtually empty house. Jacob Klerk was an estate agent and insurance broker, with an office at home. He was a dedicated Freemason, having been initiated in 1909, and he became a Master Mason in 1920. In 1932 he joined a new Lodge in Arnhem and was its secretary for many years.
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He was also an elder of the Baptist church. His wife was called Hendrika. Henri has assumed that his parents made contact with them through the Freemasons, although his own father was not a member.
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Henri’s father originally came from Krakow, now in Poland, but lived in Vienna from 1910 to 1925. He moved to Amsterdam in 1925 and gradually all his family joined him. He became a shoe designer and eventually took over the family slipper business with his brother Simon. He married Henri’s mother in 1933. Her family had lived in Holland since before 1800. Henri was born in April 1940 and a month later the Germans invaded. Gradually, life became more
difficult
for Jews as restrictions on their activities were increased. In 1942 the Jewish Council was ordered to arrange for Jews to be chosen for work in the East, and the Obstfelds received call-up papers for Henri. Not surprisingly, his parents were alarmed when they realised that their 2-year-old son had to present himself with a rucksack, clothing and food for a few days, in order to be sent off to work in the East. They immediately took him to his Uncle Dolek’s whilst looking for
somewhere
permanent to leave him.
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Henri has described how initially he was taken by train to Arnhem to meet the Klerks:

He concedes his life was pleasant enough as he was not aware of shortages, but he had no knowledge of how the Klerks managed these matters when everyone had ration books. He only played with Emmy Willemsen, the Klerks’
granddaughter
, who was three years younger than him and with whom he stayed in touch.
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Sadly, she died in January 2006.
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Apparently Henri was passed off as a
nephew whose parents had been killed in the German bombardment of the city of Rotterdam in the early days of the German invasion. Many people died at that time and many ‘hidden’ children were explained away in this way. Only in 2001, Els told him that when she had taken him for a walk one day with Emmy in her pram, someone had asked her whether he was, by any chance, a Jewish child. She had replied: ‘Oh no, he is a nephew.’

Even after Henri had been returned to his parents, at least one shopkeeper had enquired whether that little boy had been a Jewish child.
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This curiosity about his presence must have created anxiety as the Klerks could have been betrayed by nosy neighbours at any time. However, he was not physically hidden and recalls playing in the back garden from where he watched the trams go by. He also went out shopping with his ‘aunt’. He remembers playing in the part of the house used as an office and so the staff and the visitors would have seen and been aware of him.
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He remembers visiting one of Klerk’s employees with his ‘aunt’ on one occasion. It was only just round the corner and the house overlooked the sidings of Arnhem railway station and he enjoyed watching the trains. Although nothing unusual happened, he remembers the Klerks talking about it and deciding not to do it again.

When I asked him about how risky this must have been, he said anyone could have gone to the Nazis; in fact, many did and just supplied an address. A Jewish life was worth 7.00 guilders which is what was paid to the informer. Henri was not sure what this was worth at the time but in 1961
£
1 equalled 10 guilders.
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In September 1944 they were evacuated, prior to the battle of Arnhem
featured
in the film
A Bridge Too Far
, to Harskamp, a hamlet 20km away, and were liberated by the Canadians on 17 April 1945. As the war was over, the Klerks wrote through the Red Cross to the last known address where his parents had hidden. Fortunately, they too survived to claim their ‘baby’ – now 5 years old.
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Apparently, when Henri saw his mother again, he recognised her and said: ‘You stayed away a very long time.’
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Henri’s conclusions on the Klerks’ motivation, following discussion with their daughter, are these:
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Henri proposed the Klerks and their daughter and son-in-law to Yad Vashem, for recognition as Righteous Among the Nations, which was awarded on 10 April 2000 in the synagogue in Arnhem.

I was quite unaware of the Nazis’ obsession with Freemasons until I looked into Henri’s story. The Nazis regarded all Freemasons as allies of the Jews, and both were regarded with suspicion by right-wing bodies in Germany and France from the 1840s. The infamous publication
The Protocols of Zion
linked Jewish and Masonic conspiracies arguing that Freemasons were in league with the ‘Elders of Zion’. In Sweden the notorious anti-Semite Elof Eriksson from 1932 focused on the Freemasons ‘as the Jews’ main associates and vehicles of propaganda in their quest for world dominance’.
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When the Nazis came to power they created an anti-Masonic museum. Members were ordered to leave their Lodges, and those who had not done so prior to the Nazis’ rise to power on 30 January 1933 were not accepted into the Nazi Party, and some were sent to concentration camps. In September 1935 all Lodges were forced to dissolve themselves and property was confiscated.
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The fall of France in June 1940 led the German Foreign Minister, Alfred Rosenberg, to raid Masonic premises; documents were seized and Lodges were looted. On 1 May 1942 Hermann Göring, the most powerful Nazi after Hitler, said:

This loot was confiscated by the Soviet forces in 1945 and only returned to France after the collapse of communism in 1990, following their discovery by an American researcher, Kennedy Grimstead. In total, 750 boxes of material were sent from Moscow to Paris by lorry in December 2000.

Evert Kwaadgras provided me with a great deal of information on Jacob Klerk’s early life. He was born on 19 April 1881 in Warder, a village in the Dutch province of Noord-Holland. He appears to have first applied to be a Mason in 1909 in Hoorn, close to Warder. He was accepted and initiated on 26 October, but at the time was living temporarily in Germany, in Essen on the Ruhr. His job was as a ‘representative of a Dutch vegetable transport company’. Evert stressed to me that Holland has always been a great exporter of vegetables, especially to Germany. Some time before 1915 he moved to Breda, and then in 1916 he moved to Arnhem. He joined the local Lodge and became a Master Mason. In 1923 he joined a new Lodge called ‘
De Oude Landmerken
’ and he was the secretary for many years.
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The Masons have no record of his looking after Henri:

The Dutch Freemasons have no records from the war years: ‘The Nazis banned and suppressed all Masonic organisations, including ours, so in the years 1940– 1945 there were no regular Masonic activities such as Lodge meetings, and, accordingly, there are no normal records available.’
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Kwaadgras concluded:

Henri remained as an only child, growing up with an extended family of cousins, aunts and uncles, most of whom had also survived by hiding. As a young teenager Henri joined Jewish youth groups and became involved in camps and Hebrew educational seminars. When he was 16 he started the Dutch opticians’ course in Rotterdam, after which he started working in a few practices. One of his bosses did some lecturing on a part-time basis and sent Henri to do so in his place. He realised he needed to broaden his optometry skills and applied to study in London in 1961. He stayed in London doing research and developing his skills until he became Senior Lecturer at City University. He has been involved in developing optometry courses in his native Holland and also lecturing abroad.

In 1972 he married Dorothy who was born in Cape Town. They have two sons and two grandchildren. In the 1990s he met an old acquaintance from Amsterdam, also living in London, who introduced him to a group of Jewish child survivors. He and Dorothy are now active in the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust (WFJCSH) where Henri holds the office of vice-president. He is also involved in the European Association of Survivors.
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Jacob Klerk died on 2 February 1953, a fortnight before Henri’s Barmitzvah.
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His wife Hendrika died on 18 July 1971. Their grandchild, Henri’s foster sister Emmy, died on 28 January 2006.
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Robert Maistriau (1921–2008)
was only 22 when, on 19 April 1943, he led a daring raid on a train carrying 1,600 Jews from Belgium to Auschwitz. His two
colleagues, Youra Livchitz and Jean Franklemon, were both 25 when they set off on their bicycles with their equipment – a pistol, three pairs of wire cutters, a lantern and red paper. This was also the day the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising started.

The three had cycled the 40km from Brussels to Boortmeerbeek in Flanders and used the red paper to turn the lantern into a temporary red signal to stop the train on its way east. The train was taking 1,631 Jews from Mechelen (Malines) transit camp to Auschwitz – a full list compiled by Nazi officials at Mechelen gives names, dates of birth, places of birth and occupation. It shows a great many schoolchildren were on the train.
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As soon as the train stopped they used the wire cutters to cut the doors open and encouraged people to jump out, and seventeen people did. As the guards opened fire, Livchitz fired their pistol while the other two opened another carriage and again urged people to jump. Some people on the train had been warned of the rescue and managed to cut open a third carriage and escape. A total of 231 Jews escaped, and although twenty-three died, most got away and were helped in some way by Belgians. Some, like Simon Gronowski, an 11-year-old boy, jumped once the train started moving. He walked all night and eventually approached a house with a tale of having got lost from his playmates. He was taken to the local policeman and was terrified of being handed back to the Germans. The policeman said to Simon: ‘I know everything. You were in the Jewish train and you escaped. You don’t need to worry. We are good Belgians, we won’t betray you.’

Maistriau told of one woman who asked him what she should do as she looked around in the dark. He said to her: ‘Madame, Brussels is that way, Louvain is that way. Sort it out for yourselves. I’ve done all I can.’
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Jacques Grauwels and his friend had jumped from the train and, whilst waiting for a tram, worried that their filthy appearance would draw attention to them. They chose to wait on the stairs to escape quickly if necessary: