Steinfort Janna

Steinfort, Janna (van Aalst) On September 3, 1944, the evening before the brothers Manfred and Zvi Klafter were due to be sent to an extermination camp, they cut through the barbed wire fence at Westerbork, where they were interned, and escaped. Once outside the camp, they hid in a hole in the ground. The following morning they moved on. At 5 a.m., they arrived in Assen and knocked at the door of the first house they arrived at. Despite the early hour, Janna Steinfort-van Aalst opened the door to the fugitives. In the meantime, her husband fled the premises because he thought that the Gestapo had come to arrest him. Janna invited the brothers into her home and fed them. They told her that they could not stay in Assen and that they must keep moving. Janna helped them flee the town on foot. Together with her seven-year-old son and two other young men, she escorted them some of the way; the group acted as though they were on a family outing. When they reached a bus stop, Janna handed Manfred and Zvi some money and bid them farewell. After the war, the brothers were unable to track down Janna because they knew neither her name nor address. After many years, Zvi (who had changed his surname to Eyal and was a professor at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University) located her via a TV program. He subsequently submitted a request to Yad Vashem to recognize her as Righteous Among the Nations. On June 3, 1992, Yad Vashem recognized Janna Steinfort-van Aalst as Righteous Among the Nations.