Jonker Hilda

Verwey-Jonker, Hilda Europe’s Jews were doomed in the prescient view of Hilda Verwey-Jonker, who had been working with Jewish refugee children even before the war broke out. A socialist member of the Eindhoven city council, Hilda was also head of the committee for refugees in the area, which was responsible for a home for young Jewish boys from Germany called Het Dommelhuis. This institution provided a shelter for some 140 refugees from January 1939 to March 1940. Hilda tried to get these boys out of the country, to Palestine, the United States, South Africa, or South America. When the borders were closed, Hilda concentrated her efforts on saving these youngsters. She helped some of the boys obtain Aryan papers and go to Germany as part of the forced labor contingents, which was preferable to deportation. She also helped many people go underground and kept them supplied with food and ration cards for the duration of the war. Hilda was instrumental in saving the lives of, among others, Bep (Bertha) Denneboom of Zwolle and her sister, whose aunt was the principal of the Jewish school in Eindhoven. Bep, equipped with false identity papers supplied by Hilda, worked as a live-in maid for a family who never suspected for a moment that she was Jewish. Hilda supplied Bep with ration cards and gave her vital moral support as well as offering her a house to stay in when her employers were away on vacation. Each month, Hilda devoted a day to the distribution of ration cards to those under her care. After the liberation, Hilda was a member of the committee that oversaw the disposition of hidden children, many of whose parents had not survived. At this time, Bep Denneboom moved in with Hilda and helped out around the house until August 1945, when she was married. Hilda was also the head of the Dutch delegation to the first General assembly of the United Nations, where she was responsible for drafting a resolution on displaced persons. This stipulated that refugees would notbe repatriated to their country of birth but rather to the country from which they had been deported. On March 18, 1987, Yad Vashem recognized Hilda Verwey-Jonker as Righteous Among the Nations.