Dijkhuis Helena (Leignes Bakhoven)

Leignes, Helena Cornelia (Bakhoven) Olga Pollak (later Visser) was born in Vienna in 1924, the only child of a Jewish mother and half-Jewish, half-Protestant father. On February 19, 1939, Olga’s father sent her to Holland with a transport of Jewish and half-Jewish children. The young refugees were accommodated in a camp and later some of the children, including Olga, were transferred to a Mennonite retreat. Twenty-eight-year-old Helena (Leni) Bakhoven (later Leignes) worked for this institution and was responsible for the Austrian refugee children. After the German invasion, Leni invited Olga to come and live with her at her parsonage in Borne, Overijssel, where the girl stayed from June 1940 until the end of the war. Leni treated Olga like her own child and made sure that she led as normal a life as possible, including sending her to high school. Throughout the war, Olga feared that the Germans would discover that her father was half-Jewish and she would thus be considered Jewish in turn and deported. During the war, Leni also sheltered other Jewish refugees at the parsonage. A Jewish woman, Mrs. Menko, and her daughter, Miep, hid in the attic for two years and another Jewish couple also stayed in the house. Anselm Citron, another child from the retreat, would regularly spend his vacations with Leni. The risks were considerable, especially after a German officer requisitioned a room directly beneath the Jews. Underground workers often came by and stayed the night or delivered forged identity cards and food coupons In September 1944, a non-Jewish woman, Geertje van Goor-Lambo, hid with Leni, as many of her Resistance colleagues had recently been captured. On October 13, 1997, Yad Vashem recognized Helena Cornelia Leignes-Bakhoven as Righteous Among the Nations.