Communications - Brief Article - Letter to the Editor

I would like to add a postscript to my article in the last issue of Judaism ("Jewish Resistance in Holland: Group Westerweel and Hachshara," Judaism, Fall 2000: 449-459) about the Jewish halutzim in the Dutch resistance group now named the Westerweel Group. It concerns the part of Letty Rudeisheim, born in 1915, one of the Jewish members of the group.

Letty's story is that of a woman of courage, who was part of the Jewish component of the Jewish-Christian resistance group headed by Joop Westerweel. The ensuing failure of the rescue project she was involved in was not a sign of lack of initiative and personal strength, but rather an indication of the tremendous odds which every act of resistance in the Netherlands was up against.

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Her story is as follows: Letty had at first gone into hiding in August 1942, through the good services of the Westerweel group, but after about half a year of underground life she was eager to do something for others and asked to have a more active role in the resistance.

As the underground group had by then concentrated its energies on an escape line, Letty was given the task of running a place for Jewish youngsters slated to participate in this escape project. An apartment in Rotterdam was put at the group's disposal by a non-Jew who was helped across the border into Belgium by the Westerweel group after he was called up for forced labor in Germany. The apartment was small and had only two registered residents while Letty had to provide for many times that number.

Equipped with food coupons provided by the resistance, she went from store to store to buy small quantities of food at each to avoid suspicion. She herself could freely go about with her illegal, but "original" ID card. Nevertheless, someone in the system gave them away: the Germans raided the apartment on October 10,1943, and took all residents prisoner. The eight Jewish halutzim who were there at the time were all taken to the Rotterdam prison, then to the Dutch transit camp of Westerbork and from there to Auschwitz. None of them survived.

Letty herself was taken with her charges to the Rotterdam prison, but she was separated from them as she was thought to be Aryan. Her path followed that of a political prisoner: interrogation at first, then prisons. After more than half a year of different prisons, she was taken to the Gestapo headquarters in The Hague where she heard she had been ransomed by Joop Westerweel himself. She was taken back to Rotterdam by train to meet her friends, Willy Westerweel and Giel Salome, who were waiting for her with bicycles to take her home. Here a nightmare ensued. First Giel was arrested on the platform of the train station, identified by the double agent they had not known about. As they were ready to jump on their bikes outside the station, Willy and Letty were also arrested by the Gestapo. All had been betrayed by one of their own members, Karel Kaufmann, and Letty's Jewish identity had been brought to light.

Letty's road led to Westerbork and Auschwitz, Willy's to the Ravensbrueck camp for political women prisoners. Both survived the camps sick in body but nevertheless strong in spirit and both reached a ripe old age, Willy died in 1999 at the age of 90, Letty is still vigorous of mind and body.

This is the story, more or less fully, that I had from Letty after the article was already in print I think it is worth publication for two reasons: first of all, it is the real story of what happened to Letty and corrects a few details reported not quite accurately; secondly, it shows in a nutshell the enormous difficulty existing in the Netherlands at the time in evading the ever-vigilant eye of the Nazis and their Dutch collaborators whose thirst for Jews knew no bounds. This caused the record of Jewish victims in Holland to be not only the worst in Western Europe, but second only to Poland (percentage-wise) in the overall statistics of Holocaust victims.

CHANA ARNON

Jerusalem, Israel