Linker Geertruida

Linker, Geertruida Hendrika Alida Geertruida (Geke) Linker, was born in Scherpenzeel (prov. Gelderland), in 1921. She was the oldest of seven children in a poor family. At the age of 20, she started her studies in psychology at the University of Utrecht, even though her family thought she should learn a simple useful trade. In the summer of 1942, Jan Meulenbelt, a fellow student, who had witnessed a razzia against Jews being forcefully taken from their homes. As a result, he founded what was to become the UKC* organized student resistance in Utrecht. Among others, he approached Geke who agreed to take part in the effort to save children, and later adults, from deportation. From then on, she dedicated most of her time to rescue activities. She accompanied Jewish children who were smuggled out of the Crèche, the deportation holding area in Amsterdam for Jewish children, to hiding addresses around in the country. She looked for hiding addresses for them in the countryside, and brought necessary false identity cards and food coupons to Jews in hiding. On November 29, 1943, Geke was betrayed and arrested. After incarceration in an Amsterdam prison, she was taken to the Vught (Herzogenbusch) concentration camp in March 1944. In September 1944, with the imminent liberation of the south of the Netherlands just before “Crazy Tuesday” (Dolle Dinsdag), she was moved to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany together with others who had been active in the student resistance, among them Hetty Voûte*, Gisele Söhnlein* and Tineke Wibaut*. On April 24, 1945, Geke, who by then had contracted TB in the camp, was exchanged for German prisoners of war and taken to Sweden by the Red Cross for a period of recuperation. Months after the liberation in May 1945, Geke returned to the university to study political science. On August 25, 2003, Yad Vashem recognized Geertruida Hendrika Alida Linker as Righteous Among the Nations.