Sandberg Willem

Sandberg, Willem Jacob Henri Berend Shocked by the persecution of the Jews, the curator of the Stedelijk (Municipal) Museum in Amsterdam was not prepared to sit idly by while appalling injustices were being perpetrated all around him. Willem Sandberg had held his position at the museum since 1938 and was one of the organizers of the artists’ resistance movement. Together with several friends he began forging identity cards. Sandberg’s training and experience as a graphic designer and his contacts in the world of printing were useful in getting the illicit operation off the ground. When young Dutch men were called up for forced labor, the group stepped up production, issuing thousands of forged documents. Working from his museum office, Sandberg met Dorothea Hertz-Loeb and took it upon himself to supply her and three other members of her family with forged identity papers, which were produced in the basement of the museum. As Jews began to be systematically rounded up for deportation from the summer of 1942 on, the artists’ resistance group decided that the Population Registration office had to be destroyed. Sandberg was active in the planning stage, working out how to enter and take over the heavily guarded building and set fire to the archives. The explosives to be used in the attack were temporarily stored in his home. After months of preparation, the attack was finally carried out on March 27, 1943. When rumor spread that the action had been successful, flowers were spontaneously placed in windows all over Amsterdam. The Germans lost no time pursuing the perpetrators of the attack and within a matter of days, most had been arrested. Thirteen men were condemned to death and executed in July 1943. Sandberg escaped this fate. On the night when his home was searched, he was in the dunes near the North Sea, where the art treasures of Amsterdam had been hidden. His wife and son, however, were arrested and incarcerated for several months. Sandberg hid in thecountryside for the remainder of the occupation, assuming the identity of his own grandfather while circulating letters that gave the impression that he had escaped to Switzerland. Until the arrest and execution of Gerrit van der Veen in 1944, Sandberg sent reports on German troop movements from his country hideaway. After the war, Sandberg served as director of the Stedelijk Museum until 1963, turning it into an internationally acclaimed museum of contemporary art. In 1964, he was invited to become the director of the newly established Israel Museum in Jerusalem, a position that he held until 1968. On November 26, 1968, Yad Vashem recognized Willem Jacob Henri Berend Sandberg as Righteous Among the Nations.