Berg van den Adrianus & Maria

Berg van den, Adrianus Berg van den-van Uden, Maria Adrianus and Maria van den Berg were farmers at some distance from the village of Middelrode (prov. North-Brabant). Five daughters from an earlier marriage of Maria, in the ages 12 until 24, were living with them. In the spring of 1944, they were approached by a courier, Gré van Dijk*, to take five-year-old David Rodrigues Garcia from Amsterdam into hiding. With the onset of the deportations of the Jews in the summer of 1942, the Rodrigues Garcia family, of Portuguese Jewish descent, parents Philip and Sara (née Vieyra) and their young son David, b.1939, moved in with a distant relative. With the increased danger of betrayal in the spring of 1943, David was passed to a student resistance group, who took him to a hiding address in Zwolle (prov. of Overijssel). When he had to leave that address at the beginning of 1944, Gré van Dijk took him to the van den Bergs. Since the boy had a dark complexion, he was introduced as a child from the Netherlands’ Dutch Indies colony (today, Indonesia). David, answering to the name Bennie, had difficulties adapting to his new environment, but the warmth and loving care he received from all members of the van den Berg family made him soon feel at home. Anticipating possible house searches, the van den Bergs prepared a hiding area in the chicken coop, with some toys for four-year-old David. He indeed had to pass some time in this hiding area, when the family was tipped off about searches. With the approach of the Allied Forces in September 1944, the van den Bergs home came into the line of fire. After first having had to tolerate the billeting of German soldiers on their farm, they had to evacuate, taking David with them. Indeed, their home was hit by a bomb after they had left. While the town was liberated in October 1944, most of the Netherlands was still under occupation and a reversal of fortunes in the war was feared at any time. The van den Bergs were particularly aware ofthe personal risk they were taking in hiding David. They had had a Jewish student in hiding earlier, Louis Hartog from Dordrecht, who was incapable of staying inside and close to the farmhouse. He was, therefore, moved to a different hiding address where he was discovered. The van den Bergs kept David until the entire country was liberated in May 1945. It then turned out that his parents had been murdered in Sobibór. Only at the beginning of 1947 was David taken to the same relatives where the Rodrigues Garcia family had hidden earlier. He stayed there until he immigrated to Israel in 1962. David stayed in touch with his rescuers thereafter. On June 20, 2005, Yad Vashem recognized Adrianus van den Berg and Maria van den Berg-van Uden, as Righteous Among the Nations.