Schaft Piet & Aafje (Vrijer)

Schaft, Piet Schaft-Vrijer, Aafje Talea Philine Polak (later, Lachman), born in 1921, was a student at the City University of Amsterdam, where she met Hannie Schaft* (already recognized in 1967), at the time studying in the University’s Department of Law and active in collecting money for the republican side in the Spanish Civil War. A friendship developed, and when the deportations of the Dutch Jews to the camps in “the East” started in the summer of 1942, Hannie turned to her parents, Piet and Aafje Schaft, asking whether Philine could hide in their home. They agreed, even though Aafje was a sickly woman. Thus, in the fall of 1942, Philine and another young Jewish woman, Sonja Frenk, born in 1920, were taken into the Schaft home in Haarlem (prov. North-Holland). They hid in the attic and ventured outside to breath fresh air only late in the evening on dark nights. Hannie, in the mean time, had become very active in underground activities, involving sabotage and armed resistance, working together with her friend Truus Menger*. By the end of 1943, Hannie had become a marked woman, and it was thus considered too dangerous to keep the women in hiding -- new addresses had to be found. Philine succeeded in locating another address; Sonja, however, was captured, deported and perished in Auschwitz. Hannie was finally arrested in March 1945 and executed a few weeks later. Philine immigrated to the United States in 1947. On October 25, 2009, Yad Vashem recognized Piet Schaft and Aafje Talea Schaft-Vrijer as Righteous Among the Nations.