Mirjam and Menachem, 1943. |
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Mirjam and Henry (Zvi) Hamerslag at
an institution in Hilversum, 1944 |
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Hetty Voute, 1940s. |
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Baby’s eating utensils that arrived
together with Henry Hamerslag when he was transferred by Mirjam
Waterman to Hetty Voute at the train station and thence to Katy
Mulder. |
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Strip of cloth left over from a
Nazi flag, signed by women prisoners in Ravensbrück, including
Hetty. Yehudit Taube embroidered their signatures. |
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Mirjam Waterman
Even baby carriages became rescue vehicles during the Holocaust.
Mirjam Waterman, born in 1916, and her spouse, Menachem Pinkhof, were active in
the Dutch resistance for the rescue of children. Mirjam’s assignment was to
gather infants whose parents were marked for deportation, or who had already
been deported to Westerbork, and to deliver them to the train station in
Amsterdam.
Mirjam arrived at the station with a baby carriage and waited for the liaison
who delivered the children to families and institutions for hiding. Mirjam did
not know the babies’ destination and the identity of the woman who claimed them.
The woman’s name was Hetty Voute; she was caught and sent to Ravensbrück. Mirjam
was also caught and deported to Bergen-Belsen. After the liberation, she was
active in having the children returned to Jewish authorities.
Mirjam moved to Palestine in 1946. Hetty Voute was named Righteous among the
Nations for her feats. She died in 1999.
Many children were hidden in the
children’s institution that Katy Mulder ran. One of them was Kitty
Frank, a Zionist pioneer who had been under my care. On one of my
visits to this institution, Kitty led me to a closed room and said, “I
have another job here—to take care of two babies who’ve just arrived.”
When she showed them to me, I realized that they were the brother and
sister whom I had passed on at the train station just a few days
earlier. The girl, Mirjam Hamerslag, was a year and a half old, and
the boy was only two weeks old.
Mirjam (Waterman) Pinkhof |
