Klein, Jan Kasper
A young gymnastics teacher sheltered 17 Jewish refugees in his small house until he was betrayed in February 1944. Jan Klein was a close friend of a Jewish man, Bob Denneboom, who had gone into hiding at his weekend cottage in Egmond-Binnen, North Holland. When the coastal region was evacuated, Denneboom abandoned his hiding place and on January 1, 1943, went to live with Jan Klein. At this time, Klein was already sharing his house with his friend, Mischa Elkan, a Jew from Latvia who had moved to Amsterdam at the age of 19. Somehow, Mischa managed to convince the Germans that only two of...
Ambrus, Clara
Szirmai, Jan Alexander
During the war, Jan Alexander Szirmai was a medical student in Budapest. In 1944 he was in his second year of studies, and served as a research assistant at the university.
On March 19, 1944, Hungary was occupied by the German army, and the Jews were persecuted, deported to Auschwitz and murdered. When Szirmai first learned about the deportations, he hurried to the town of Léva, but arrived too late. He was able only to wave goodbye to his dear friend Esther Bányai and her niece Éva Bányai before they were deported, never to return. Deeply...
Egmond van, Jan
Egmond van-Star, Grietje
Henriette Klein, born in 1933, was the eldest of the three children of Jozua and Rosi Klein (née Mendel) from the far north of the country. In 1941, the family was forcibly moved away from the coast and went to live in Leiden (prov. North-Holland), where Rosi’s parents operated a boarding house. In March 1942, Jozua was arrested under the pretense of a crime he had not committed. He was subsequently deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Germany, where he perished in July that same year. Rosi, now left with three small children, became...
Kilian, Jan
Kilian, Karolina
Cwik-Kilian, Genowefa
On a December night in 1942, a Jewish boy of about 16, hungry and shivering from the cold, knocked on the door of the Kilian family’s home in the village of Pien (Tarnów County, Kraków District). The woman of the house, Karolina Kilian, let him in and saw that he was covered with sores, infested with lice, and in urgent need of a bath, food, and a warm corner in which to rest. The boy was Israel Klein, from the neighboring town of Radomsyl Wielki (Mielec County). After escaping from a killing operation he had hidden alone in the forests,...
Schuurman, Gerrit Jan
Schuurman-Klein Willink, Grada Berendina
In the fall of 1942, the newly married Jewish Mendels couple, Emanuel, b.1909, and Hanna, b.1915 (née de Beer), knocked on the door of Gerrit Jan and Grada Schuurman, both 53 years old, at their farm in the village of Vragender (prov. Gelderland). The Schuurmans had two children, 18-year-old Gerrit Willem and Johanna, age 16. Gerrit Jan Schuurman had known Emanuel Mendels, from nearby Groenlo, from earlier business transactions. Emanuel was a cattle dealer in the area. After a first wave of arrests of Jewish men in the area in October...
Černák, Ján
Černáková, Anna
Černák, Ján
The relationship between Ján Černák and his family and the Altmann and Klein families came about totally by chance. The Altmann family – David, his wife, Leah, and their son Ervín (b. 1929) – were ordered in 1941, during the displacement of the Jews of Bratislava, to move to Nové Mesto nad Váhom. David’s new job was outside of the city and, during the week, he lived with a farmer in the village of Majericky. This situation continued until the outbreak of the uprising and the German invasion of Slovakia in late August 1944. The members of the Altmann...
Gerritsen, Frans
Frans Gerritsen and his wife (later ex-wife), Henny de Haan*, lived in Haarlem and were involved in the underground from the outbreak of the war. Frans was a graphic artist whose specialty was the forging of rubber stamps and identity cards, and he also helped those trying to cross borders, preparing “Swedish papers” with which one could cross into Vichy and find hiding places on the way. Frans and Kurt Hanneman, one of the leading Jewish pioneers, or halutzim, and a leading member of the Westerweel* group, found a way to detach stamps from documents by immersing them in a chemical...
Krajňák, Ján
Krajňáková, Mária
Erika Fleischerová (later Kleinová) was seven years old when she went into hiding with Ján and Mária Krajňák in late 1944. During the deportations in May 1942, the Fleischer family – Zoltán, Regina, and their daughter Erika, as well as the grandparents – was put on a train in the village of Sabinov. They were taken to Prešov, where they were to be added to a transport. When the door of their crowded wagon opened, a Hlinka guard ordered the Fleischer couple and Erika to get out. They soon learnt that their relative showed the security services men a forged baptismal...