Pos Hendrik & Marcelle (Honig)

Pos, Hendrik Josephus Pos-Honig, Marcelle Marie Mirjam Kan (later, Shemesh), was born in Arnhem to Solly Kan and Else Keizer-Kan in June1942, just before the deportations of the Dutch Jews to the death camps had started. The Kans were temporarily exempted from deportation, as Solly Kan worked for the local Jewish Council. In the Spring of 1943, when Jews were expelled from the provinces, the Kan family was ordered to resettle in Amsterdam. From that moment on, the Kan parents decided to look for hiding addresses, initially for their infant daughter, Mirjam. They succeeded in connecting with one of the Groothand* sisters, who were active in locating hiding addresses. In May 1943, they took Mirjam into their own home until they were able to locate Hendrik and Marcelle Pos in Haarlem, who, in August 1943, were willing to take her. Hendrik Pos was a professor at Utrecht University when he refused to sign the Aryan Declaration as all university staff was ordered to do back in the fall of 1940. As a result he was fired. The couple had no children, and Mirjam grew up in their home as their own. A year after Mirjam’s arrival, the Pos couple took in an abandoned baby, not Jewish, whom they later adopted. As Marcelle Pos had been born in Algiers and was French speaking, the first words that Mirjam learned were in French. The girl stayed with the Pos couple until the liberation of the city in May 1945. Mirjam’s parents had been deported to Bergen Belsen, but survived. After their return, they managed to make contact with the Groothand sisters who led them to the hiding address of their daughter. Separation for all was extremely difficult, and it was considered better for each family to go its own way and contact was stopped. Only in the 1990s was Mirjam made aware of her hiding story through a researcher into the life of Professor Pos. On September 20, 2011, Yad Vashem recognized Henrik Josephy Pos and Marcelle Marie Pos-Honig as Righteous Among the Nations.