Mansum van Margaretha

Mansum van, Margaretha Barbara In 1941, Margaretha (Greet) van Mansum and her brother, Arie van Mansum*, whisked the young, sick Sonja Sanowski away from the hospital to a hiding place. They also took care of Sonja’s nine-year-old brother, Robert, and regularly took news about the siblings to the children’s parents, Herman and Anne. Later, when Herman and Anne also went into hiding, Greet and Arie provided ration cards for the entire Sanowski family, without ever asking for any compensation. In 1942, when Jozef and Rebecca Leyden van Amstel gave birth to a daughter, a young non-Jewish couple (who later revealed themselves to be Greet and Arie) visited Jozef and Rebecca and told them to prepare their baby for a long journey. Having no choice, the couple handed over the newborn child to these strangers, whose names they did not even know. Jozef and Rebecca now had to find themselves a hiding place too. Arie returned the very same day and took Rebecca to a hideaway and promised to help Jozef if he could make his own way to Roermond. Jozef did this and, from Roermond, Greet took Jozef and four other Jews whose names she did not know through the forest and across the Belgian border. Greet and the fugitives, however, crossed immediately back into Holland and fled to the north of the country. There, Greet found a hiding place for Jozef, where Rebecca joined him in 1944. (For as long as Rebecca had been hiding in the south of the country, Greet had provided her with ration coupons without asking for any remuneration.) Immediately after the liberation, Jozef began looking for his daughter. He found her with the parents of Greet and Arie in Maastricht. The baby had stayed with this couple throughout the war and they had taken excellent care of her. Jozef then offered to pay the van Mansums for their efforts but they refused to accept any form of reward. The two families maintained a very warm friendship thereafter. During the war, Greet also helped another infant: InSeptember 1942, the Germans deported the Weinbergen family from Amsterdam to Westerbork. There, their three-year-old baby, Lodi, fell seriously ill. The Germans took him to a hospital in Groningen, from where nurse Froukje Groen* whisked him away on September 22, 1943, and handed him over to Greet. Greet took the baby first to the home of a teacher in Maastricht that was used as a temporary hiding place for Jewish children and later to the home of the Prikken family, where he remained until the end of the war. Greet also helped dozens of other people during the war. Among them were Frits Freilich, who hid with Greet’s parents for two and a half years without paying, his brother Toni Freilich, Martin (Mordechai) and Sonja (Sara) (Doof)-Schneiderman, Szaindle and Agnes Schneiderman, Jacques Butterteig (later Jitschak Nir), and Mr. and Mrs. Wodka and their son and daughter. On September 22, 1981, Yad Vashem recognized Margaretha Barbara van Mansum as Righteous Among the Nations.