van Praagh Petronella (Blom)

Praagh van, Petronella Cornelia (Blom) Petronella (née Blom, b. 1890) was married to Sally van Praagh, who was Jewish. The couple had four children: Anthonie (b. 1918), Annie (b. 1921), Marianne (b. 1923), and Willy (b. 1925). The family lived in Rijswijk, a town in the western Netherlands. Sally van Praagh had twelve siblings and came from a large extended family. When the Germans occupied the Netherlands, the Van Praagh family was in danger. Sally, married to a non-Jewish woman, was relatively safe from persecution because the Nazis usually left the Jews in mixed marriages alone. This enabled Sally and Petronella (called Nel) to provide temporary shelter to relatives who went into hiding, until another hiding address could be found for them. Sally had befriended a married grocer from Delft whose name was Henk de Wit. Henk and Carrie de Wit (recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations in 1978) offered to hide Sally in their home if he were ever in danger. Sally explained that for the time being there was no need for him to hide, because of his marriage to Nel. When relatives started turning to Sally and Nel for help, the Van Praaghs contacted the De Wits, who ultimately hid about twelve members of the Van Praagh family. Nel and Sally remained in contact with those hiding in Delft, as well as with other relatives who had been hidden with other families. They helped them regularly with food, food coupons, and money, assisted by their children. Sally and Nel also hid relatives in their own home, among them Maurits (Maup) van Praagh (b. 1902). Maup stayed with them for about half a year. When one day the house was raided by the Germans, he had a narrow escape through the back door of the house; he hid in the garden and fortunately was not discovered. Toward the end of the war, Selma, their niece, stayed in their house too. She could move around freely, thanks to false identity papers, which enabled her to work in a maternity home. Nel had a brother who was a barber. Sometimes he would visit the hiding Jews at several addresses, to give them a proper haircut. One day he was working in his barber shop, where Nazi sympathizers and Germans also came for haircuts. He was careless and told one of his customers that he was even cutting the hair of Jews in hiding. A Nazi overheard this conversation, and that same night Nel’s brother was arrested and interrogated. Soon afterward Nel and Sally van Praagh were arrested and interrogated. In the meanwhile the hiders in Delft had been warned, and most of them were able to move on to another hiding address. In September 1943 the Germans came to Delft and searched Henk and Carrie de Wit’s house. The Van Praagh relatives who had still not been able to escape were discovered and arrested. They were sent to concentration camps, from where they did not return. Sally and Nel were imprisoned in Scheveningen, from where Sally was freed in January 1944. After four months Nel was transferred to the camp in Vught, where she was an inmate until August 1944. When she returned home, she was mentally and physically broken, and she never recovered from the difficult experiences she had during her imprisonment. On September 5, 2016, Yad Vashem recognized Petronella Cornelia (Blom) van Praagh as Righteous Among the Nations.