Miedema Pieter & Joekje (Zijlstra)

Miedema, Pieter & Joekje (Zijlstra) During the occupation, Pieter Miedema was the Dutch Reformed vicar in Drachstercompagnie, Friesland. Many Jews hid in this village and Pieter and his wife, Joekje, were especially active in helping them. Pieter considered the Jews to be the Chosen People and so he always treated them with respect. At a meeting of local clergymen in 1942, Pieter said to his 1,550 parishioners: “If you refuse to open your house and heart to an innocent fugitive, then there is no place for you in the community of the righteous.” In April 1942, the Miedemas had their first child, a baby girl. Towards the end of that year, the 19-year-old Jew Louis de Wied came to stay with them. Three months later, Louis’s brother David joined him there. When a Jewish tuberculosis sanitarium was evacuated, Pieter managed to find safe addresses for 14 young patients in and around the area within two weeks. Then the Lezer family moved in with the Miedemas. The Lezers’ two children, Mia and Philip, had been maltreated at a previous address. Pieter built them an underground hideout in the woods near his home. Each week he brought them a supply of food and books. During the course of the war, Willem and Eva Melkman, a Jewish couple, stayed at six different addresses. Pieter and one of his associates supplied them with ration cards and money wherever they were. The Miedemas also hid a tailor named Joseph on the top floor of the vicarage and a medical student and a Jewish resistance worker also hid with them. When the latter was betrayed and executed, Pieter and Joekje decided to leave their home. Joekje and her children moved to her brother’s home while Pieter wandered from place to place. The whole family was eventually liberated while staying at Joekje’s mother’s home, where two Allied pilots were hidden. During the war, Pieter and Joekje saved the lives of at least 23 Jews. The Resistance in Utrecht decorated Pieter, as did General Eisenhower and Field MarshallMontgomery. On September 12, 1993, Yad Vashem recognized Pieter Miedema and his wife, Joekje Miedema-Zijlstra, as Righteous Among the Nations.