Holbek Helga

Holbek, Helga Helga Holbek a Danish woman, helped rescue Jewish children during World War II. She was a senior member of the International Commission for the Assistance of Child Refugees in charge of supervising 16 institutions for refugee children in southern France. At the initiative of the OSE organization, at the end of February 1941 about 50 children from the Gurs concentration camp were taken to an orphanage called Maison des pupilles de la Nation in Aspet, near St. Gaudens, in the south of France. Helga Holbek and her Norwegian colleague Alice Resch* (see Norway) took care of the children. In the fall of 1942 some of them were transferred to the Château de Larade orphanage in Toulouse, while others were dispersed in orphanages in the area, where they stayed until May 1944. “The children of Aspet” have never forgotten the benevolence and dedication of Helga Holbek. One of the children was Uri Landau who recalled the role of Holbek in his rescue and the rescue of the other children. Holbek risked her life many times for the sake of the children. She also conducted an illegal operation to save the Hungarian Jewish painter, Sigismund Kolozsvary, and his wife Matyi, who were interned in Gurs for some time. Although they had no identification papers, she managed to arrange safe houses for them, until she smuggled them out to Switzerland. Holbek died in 1983. Many of her escapades are recorded in the book of memoirs, Over the Highest Mountains, written by Alice Resch Synnestveld and dedicated to Holbek. On July 13, 1982, Yad Vashem recognized Helga Holbek as Righteous Among the Nations.