Drop Johannes & Gerarda (Tieleman)

Drop, Johannes & Gerarda (Tieleman) Jan (Johannes) Drop was one of the earliest members of the Dutch underground and received many citations for saving children. He found hiding places for a Jewish family, Edit and Gustav Waysbaum, their two daughters, and a young son, then six years old. Edit and Gustav hid in Voorburg, South Holland. The four others, the aunt (Hella) and the children, found other hiding places, most of them in The Hague. Edit and Gustav were caught after being betrayed in January 1944. Despite efforts to get them out of Westerbork, they were sent to Auschwitz and perished there, but the three children and the aunt were saved. In addition to finding hiding places, during the war, Jan procured food cards for those hiding. Jan was wounded during an underground operation and his brother and father were caught and killed by the Germans. His wife, Gerarda, who looked after her four children alone, became ill from all the stress of wartime and was disabled for the rest of her life. Jan’s opposition to the Nazi occupation began with his refusal to sign the declaration attesting to his being Aryan. As an inspector of the Raad van Arbeid (Labor Council), he was compelled to sign the declaration. Only 17 out of 70,000 government employees refused to sign, and he was one of them. Subdequently he became a leader of the LO-LKP in the region between Amsterdam and his hometown of Utrecht, an area called Het Gooi, whose center was the town of Baarn. His activities later shifted to The Hague. Benno Waysbaum, a Jewish boy, hid with the Drops for a short time. After the war, Jan helped locate the boy, who had been hidden in many places, the last one in Friesland. Jan’s motives were religious and also national. After the Six Day War, he collected donations at churches and sent them to Israeli embassies. On March 15 1990, Yad Vashem recognized Jan Drop and his wife, Gerarda Drop-Tieleman, as Righteous Among the Nations.