“Geertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

Geertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer (21 April 1896, Alkmaar – 30 August 1978, Amsterdam) was a Dutch resistance fighter, who brought Jewish children and adults into safety before and during the Second World War. Together with other people involved in the pre-war Kindertransport, she saved the lives of more than 10,000 Jewish children. She was honored as Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

Early life

Geertruida is born in the city of Alkmaar. Her nickname is Truus. Truus is the firstborn child of Jacob Meijer, who owns a drugstore/pharmacy and Hendrika Boer, a selfemployed dressmaker. For two years she attends the School of Commerce^[1]. Her parents teach her to always to stand up for people who really deserve and need it. After World War I, her parents set the example of helping the needy by taking in a homeless German boy to stay with them. In 1913 the family moves to Amsterdam.

A year later, Truus gets her first job at a bank, where she meets her future husband, a banker named J. F. Wijsmuller. They marry in 1922 and Truus stops working as is customary in those days. They don’t have any children, and Mrs Wijsmuller decides to become involved in social work.

Mrs Wijsmuller takes on several unpaid jobs a social worker: for example she is coordinator for an Association for Homecare, and administrator for a daycare for children of working women. She becomes a member of yhe “VVGS”: the Association for Women's interests and for Equal Citizenship. There she meets chairman Mies Boissevain-van Lennep, the a later resistance fighter. In addition to this work Mrs Wijsmuller is nominated as number 6 on the list of liberal candidates for the Amsterdam city council elections in 1935. Because of the threat of war she founds an organisation of female volunteers, the "|Korps Vrouwelijke Vrijwilligers" (KVV), and manages the administration for this organisation from her home. Soon Mrs Wijsmuller has a vast network of people

From 1933 onward Mrs Wijsmuller starts to travel to Germany to fetch family members of Jewish acquaintances and bring them safely to the Netherlands. She will be doing this for many years to come. After the Kristallnacht^[2] in 1938 rumours reach her that Jewish children are wandering unattended in the woods, so then she travels to the Dutch-German border to see what's going on there. Under her skirts Mrs Wijsmuller smuggles a Yiddish speaking Polish boy over the frontier and takes him with her to Amsterdam

Kindertransport

She was a friend of resistance fighter Mies Boissevain-van Lennep, whom she knew from the Association for Women's Interests and Equal Citizenship (VVGS.^[3] From the 1930s onward, "Auntie Truus" (as they soon called her) arranged, with Mies Boissevain and others, children's transports for the Committee for Special Jewish Interests (Dutch: Comité voor Bijzondere Joodsche Belangen - CBJB). These transports saved 10,000 Jewish children from Germany and Austria, on a route via the Netherlands to the UK.

In Germany she worked with Recha Freier, the wife of a Berlin rabbi. She was not intimidated easily, made a fuss if necessary, bribed railroad men with gifts and German officers with charm. She negotiated with the man who would later organize the transports of Jews to Auschwitz and other concentration camps, Adolf Eichmann, who was working in Vienna at the time. Eichmann joked with her: no negotiation, she could take 600 Viennese Jewish children immediately. In the following days she took them to Hook of Holland, from where five hundred of them immediately traveled to Great Britain. The remaining hundred children were given shelter in The Hague. After this, transports became more structured and a maximum of 150 children per transport was agreed. She traveled to Germany several times a week to pick them up. The invasion of the Netherlands put a stop to these transports, as the borders to the UK were closed from that point onwards.

Wijsmuller-Meijer was in Paris when she heard of the German invasion of the Netherlands^[4]. She traveled back to Amsterdam as soon as she could. In Amsterdam the garrison commander asked her to take the Jewish children from the orphanage to the coastal town of IJmuiden, so they could still get on a boat to England. She picked up a number of children on the way, bringing the total to 74 children. She arranged a place on the last boat ("SS Bodegraven") to leave the harbor. Wijsmuller-Meijer decided to stay in the Netherlands with her husband. The ship sailed for England, but due to the German nationality of the children, they were not allowed to come ashore. The ship sailed on to Belfast, but eventually moored on 19 May at Liverpool.

The children spent the war in institutions or with families in England. During the occupation, Wijsmuller-Meijer continued to help Jews out of the country.^[5]

Work

During the occupation she continued her now illegal rescue operations. For the Dutch Red Cross she brought packets to refugee camps in southern France. When possible she took Jewish children and smuggled them to Vichy France or Spain. In 1942 she was briefly arrested by the Gestapo in the Amstelveenseweg in Amsterdam. The Gestapo suspected her – rightly – of planning to smuggle dozens of Jews to Switzerland, but they had to release her because of lack of evidence and because "Auntie Truus" did not provide them with any relevant information.

As the war progressed, she devoted herself to obtaining and distributing food. She sent thousands of packages to camps like Westerbork and Theresienstadt, and delivered duck eggs to elderly houses in Amsterdam every week. During the Dutch famine of 1944 (the Hongerwinter or "Hunger winter") she took care of malnourished children in the Randstad. She took many across the IJsselmeer to more rural areas like Groningen, Friesland, Overijssel and Drenthe to recuperate.

After the war, from 1945 until 1966, she was a member of the Amsterdam city council, for the liberal party VVD. She was also involved in the creation of workplaces for the disabled. She was a board member of the Anne Frank House. An obituary after her death summarized her life as follows: "Mother of 1001 children, who made rescuing Jewish children her life's work."

Monuments

Distinctions

Literature

References

1. ^{{Cite web|url=https://www.regionaalarchiefalkmaar.nl|title=regionaal archief alkmaar|last=wijsmuller|first=truus|date=1913|website=regionaal archief alkmaar|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=}}
2. ^{{Cite web|url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org>kristallnight|title=Kristallnight|last=|first=|date=1938|website=Kristallnight|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=}}
3. ^{{Cite web|url=https://www.niod.nl|title=Archiefcollectie299A, Documantatie I G.Wijsmuller-Meijer|last=Wijsmuller|first=G.|date=1957|website=Truus Wijsmuller-Meijer|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=}}
4. ^{{Cite book|title=Geen tijd voor tranen|last=|first=|publisher=P.N. van Kampen& Zoon, Amsterdam|year=1961|isbn=-|location=Amsterdam|pages=}}
5. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.annefrank.org/nl/Subsites/Amsterdam/Tijdlijn/Oorlog/1940/1940/Truus-Wijsmuller-weet-73-joodse-kinderen-naar-Engeland-te-smokkelen/#!/nl/Subsites/Amsterdam/Tijdlijn/Oorlog/1940/1940/Truus-Wijsmuller-weet-73-joodse-kinderen-naar-Engeland-te-smokkelen|title=Truus Wijsmuller helpt 73 Joodse kinderen naar Engeland|trans-title=Truus Wijmuller helped 73 Jewish children get to England|language=Dutch|work=Het Amsterdam van Anne Frank|publisher=Anne Frank Foundation|accessdate=25 November 2012}}