Tolsma Berber

Sijbrandi, Rienk Johannes Sijbrandi-Bruinsma, Botje Sinia-Tolsma, Berber Marcel Leiser, born in 1923 in Gouda, an only child, was working as a flower grower in the area, when Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. In spite of the increasing anti-Jewish measures which began in early 1942, he started to look for a hiding address only after his parents, Benjamin (11.10.1883 Kerpen – 26.2.1943 Auschwitz and Eva van Dantzig, 17.12.1884 Rotterdam – 26.2.1943 Auschwitz) were arrested at the end of 1942 and deported. They both perished. After a number of temporary unsafe addresses, an anonymous underground worker took Marcel to the northern province of Friesland and to the Tolsma farm in the village of Blessum. As both the Tolsma parents had already passed away, the family unit of five children was headed by the eldest daughter Berber, born in 1914. Marcel stayed with them until November 1943. He helped out as much as he could on the farm. As Thomas, one of the Tolsma sons, was active in a local resistance cell and thus a marked man, it was decided to move Marcel to a safer place. He was taken to the Sijbrandi family in the neighboring village of Deinum. Rienk and Botje Sijbrandi were simple farmers, and devout Protestants, who lived a very basic life on their dairy farm with four children at the time. Water was taken from a pump in the yard. Marcel, now answering to the name Jaap, slept in the attic behind the bedroom of the children, so as not to be seen in case of a house search. Feeding an extra mouth was difficult. Marcel thus decided to contribute by helping out on his hosts’ farm as well as on the Tolsma farm, posing as a day laborer when asked by strangers. With the increasing food shortages in the western parts of the Netherlands starting the fall of 1944, many came to these northern agricultural villages to look for food. Marcel was thus seen by many and eventually betrayed. On September 28, 1944, at the age of 21, in the middle of thenight, two members of the Landwacht (the collaborating Dutch auxiliary police), burst into the Sijbrandi home, arrested Marcel and took him to the prison in Leeuwarden. On October 12, after a failed sabotage attempt by a local resistance cell, he and two resistance people were shot in a nearby field as an act of reprisal. All his life, Rienk Sijbrandi was haunted by the fact that he might have saved Marcel. Initially buried in the general cemetery in Wolvega, Marcel was re-buried in the Jewish cemetery in Leeuwarden in 1983. In May 1981, a monument commemorating this event was erected on the very spot where the three were executed. Every year, Rienk Sijbrandi and other members of the Sijbrandi and Tolsma families participated in a ceremony in their honor. On July 22, 2007, Yad Vashem recognized Rienk Johannes Sijbrandi and Botje Sijbrandi-Bruinsma, as well as Berber Sinia-Tolsma, as Righteous Among the Nations.