Knoop van der Klaas & Hendrika (Hove van der)

Knoop van der, Klaas Willem Knoop van der–van den Hove, Hendrika Cornelia Celine (Tsila) Heilbron (née Dingsdag), who was Jewish, and Hendrika (Riek) van der Knoop were both members of the Socialist Youth Organization AJC in Amsterdam. They became good friends as did their families, who were neighbors. In the summer of 1942, the married sister of Celine, Marianna Groenteman-Dingsdag, and her husband Louis, were summoned to report ‘for work in the East’. Instead they decided to try and go into hiding, and to first look for an address for their then three-year-old son, Alexander. At that point, Celine turned to her friend Hendrika asking her if she and her husband Klaas, then both in their mid-twenties and still childless, would be willing to take the risk. Even though the sudden presence of a three-year-old would be difficult to explain, they came through and Alex was taken to their home. “This has to be done. There was no need to talk about it.” As Alex knew both Klaas and Hendrika, the move was relatively without problems. His parents, Marianna and Louis, managed to find a hiding place for themselves, but were betrayed and deported. They perished in Sobibor and Auschwitz, respectively. Celine wanted to join an underground cell but needed false papers to do so. At that point, Hendrika reported the loss of her identity card and instead gave her own to Celine, carefully changing the picture. Soon after the arrival of Alex, Hendrika became pregnant and had to rest in bed on doctor’s orders. In order not to have to move Alex from his hiding place with Hendrika and Klaas, Hendrika herself moved temporarily to her mother’s home, and Celine, who needed a hiding place, moved into the van der Knoop’s home in the guise of a nursemaid to care for Alex. After giving birth to a baby girl, Hendrika went back home and continued to care for Alex, together with her own baby daughter, Marian named after Alex’s real mother. After the war, the Dutch authoritiesassigned the van der Knoops custody of Alex. However, when his aunt Celine who had survived, decided to immigrate to Israel, they agreed that Alex go with her. They continued to maintain contact until the passing of the van der Knoops. On October 22, 2006, Yad Vashem recognized Klaas van der Knoop and Hendrika van der Knoop–van den Hove, as Righteous among the Nations.