Related
Translate
Previous entry: All eyes on Guantanamo
Next entry: Sections of Muslim Britain in denial about extremism
Advertisements *
Elsewhere
Get RNB via RSS
 |
RNB's RSS feed What is this? |
Get RNB via Email
 |
 Subscribe by Email What is this? |
Follow: Twitter
Most Popular
This Week:
- Guyana’s Jonestown suicide site gets plaque
- Gaddafi preaches Islam to Rome beauties
- Scientology practices ‘putting people at risk’
- Recession: Muslim schools in UK under threat of closure
- Muslim terrorist: Psychiatrist’s lap-dancing outings before massacre
- Australian senator tells Parliament of widespread criminal conduct within the Church of Scientology
- When a child dies, faith is no defense
- Muslim terrorists smuggle fatwas promoting Jihad out of secure UK prisons
- Techie Holy water and geeky bishops
- Israel Charges Extremist With Attempted Murder Of Messianic Family
Designer who rescued 406 Jews in Nazi-occupied Netherlands dies at 88
More articles on this topic: ObituaryNEW YORK (AP) – Jaap Penraat, an architect and industrial designer who helped 406 Jews sneak out of Nazi-occupied Netherlands and withstood torture to protect fellow members of the resistance, has died. He was 88.
Penraat died June 25 at his home in Catskill, N.Y., of esophageal cancer, said his daughter, Noelle Penraat.
Penraat was in his 20s when he began forging identity cards for Jews. He was arrested, imprisoned for several months and tortured, but refused to tell his captors anything.
After his release from prison, Penraat and other resistance members disguised Jews as construction workers hired to work on the defensive wall that Nazi forces were building along France’s Atlantic Coast. He made 20 trips accompanying groups of refugees to Lille, France, where the Jews were met by the French underground and sent on to neutral Spain.
Speaking about his wartime experiences years later, Penraat said he had simply done what seemed necessary.
”You do these things because in your mind there is no other way of doing it,” he told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2000.
Of the 140,000 Jews who lived in the Netherlands before the Nazis invaded, only about 30,000 survived. Poland was the only nation that lost a larger percentage of its Jewish population.
After the war, Penraat became a noted designer in Amsterdam, then moved to the United States in 1958.
He is survived by three daughters, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
What You Can Do From Here
|
Read More Articles On These Topics
Share, Blog About, Bookmark, or Email This Article
Subscribe
Read Another Article
Previous entry: All eyes on Guantanamo Next entry: Sections of Muslim Britain in denial about extremism
RNB Homepage with latest headlinesFind Related Information
Find Related Books
|
Share This Article
To share this page simply copy and paste one of these URL's:
