Wit de Cornelis & Catharina

Wit de, Cornelis Gerhardus C. Wit de, Catharina (van Veen) The Jewish Vredenburg family consisted of Abraham (b. 1914), Rachel (b. 1908), and their little daughter, Betty, who was born on May 6, 1940, only four days before the German invasion of the Netherlands. They lived in Amsterdam, and a young woman helped them take care of Betty. When the Vredenburgs saw that deportations of Jews had started, they decided to go into hiding. They asked Betty’s nanny for help. The nanny took Betty home, where she and her mother took care of the little girl. Abraham and Rachel found a hiding place with Cornelis Gerhardus and Catharina de Wit (b. 1886 and 1890, respectively). In the beginning everything went well. Sometimes Abraham and Rachel could visit their daughter at night and silently watch her sleeping. In addition to the Vredenburgs, there was another Jewish woman hiding with the de Wits. On April 3, 1944, the situation changed dramatically. Early in the morning little Betty and the nanny’s mother were arrested by two policemen, and later that day they were transferred to the Sicherheitsdienst (the intelligence agency of the SS) in Amsterdam. On the same day, in the afternoon, Cornelis de Wit was arrested as well, together with the Vredenburg couple and the other Jewish woman. Abraham, Rachel, and Betty Vredenburg and the woman were transported to Westerbork and from there to Auschwitz, where they all perished on May 22, 1944. Cornelis de Wit died on December 2, 1944, in one of the German camps he was sent to. Catharina de Wit stayed behind alone. This is a very sad end to the story of these brave people, who paid the highest price for their efforts to save the lives of their Jewish fellow citizens. On February 26, 2014, Yad Vashem recognized Cornelis Gerhardus C. and Catharina (van Veen) de Wit as Righteous Among the Nations.