Sometimes the good don't die young, Johan van Hulst 1911- 2018

[grantcart]

http://www.legacy.com/news/celebrity-deaths/notable-deaths/article/johan-van-hulst-1911-2018-holocaust-hero

Johan van Hulst, a Dutch principal who saved the lives of hundreds of children during the Holocaust, died March 22, 2018, at the age of 107, according to multiple news sources.

Van Hulst was the director of a Protestant religious seminary during World War II that bordered a day care that was being used by the Nazis to hold Jewish children before they were transported to concentration camps.

Van Hulst and resistance members smuggled hundreds of children from the day care to the seminary. When it was clear, the children would be carried over a hedge to the seminary. The children would stay at the seminary until a resistance activist would sneak them out in a basket on a bicycle to be taken to a family that had agreed to adopt a child.

It is estimated that Van Hulst saved hundreds of Jewish children from being sent to concentration camps.

Van Hulst was recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in 1973. His heroism was featured in the film “Sussman.”

Van Hulst talked about his experiences with Yad Vashem:

"Try to imagine 80, 90, perhaps 70 or 100 children standing there, and you have to decide which children to take with you.... That was the most difficult day of my life," he remembered of the period in 1943 when the Jewish day-care center was due to be cleared out.

In the last days when they were going to close the day care he knew that he couldn't take all of them but he did take 12. He would ask himself "why didn't I take 13?" At the age of 95 he won the Corus Chess Tournament for (former) politicians. He won the tournament again in 2010.

[lapfog_1]

1. I can't imagine making the choice of which children to save from the Nazis

RIP Mr. Van Hulst.

[grantcart]

2. From his wiki

Starting in January 1943, Pimentel and Walter Süskind, a German Jew who had been appointed by the Nazis to run the Hollandsche Schouwberg operation,[5] began canvassing potential adoptive families for physical descriptions of children who could fit into their families without detection



Suskind died on a death march in 1945

[oasis]

3. My hat is off to salute this good person and all like him.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. While I was born after WWII, for some reason I've always been intensely

interested in it, especially the Holocaust aspect. All my life I've wondered if I would have survived. I've read many books, many accounts, and I'm always in awe of those who survived and those who helped them survive. I read Schindler's List when it was still unknown, and of course saw the movie. I honestly think that those of us who did not live through that time cannot begin to comprehend what it was like.

Thank you for posting this.

[Sophia4]

5. You are so right. "Those who did not live through that time cannot begin to

comprehend what it was like."

[DFW]

6. I have to agree

Most of the people I have known that lived through this time are gone now, but a few remain, including my own 90 year old mother-in-law, who is visiting with us for ten days. Though not as strong as she was physically, she is completely clear mentally, and still tell stories about her wartime experiences, including routinely diving into ditches on the way to school to avoid being killed in strafing runs by British fighter-bombers, her dad risking the death penalty for listening to British radio, and losing 3 of her brothers, one being killed just 3 miles from their home while trying to retreat. One family member saw the writing on the wall early and left for Canada before the war broke out, and never was heard from again, although some Canadian descendants of his got in touch later on. I met one of them on his first visit to Germany and had to translate for him, as no one of his generation had any knowledge of German. His ancestor had cut cultural ties as well as family ties, it seems.

One of their neighbors, now passed on, told me he was a twelve year old member of the Hitler Youth (joined at ten) when the war ended, and he talked freely about the total brainwashing he and his generation had undergone. He said we couldn't imagine the scope of the control the state had over their minds. I though of today's religious fanatics, and thought I had an idea of how it went.

Another acquaintance of mine from Holland, now gone, still had the tattooed number on his arm from being a prisoner at Auschwitz as a teenager. A soccer fanatic, he once was accompanying the Dutch national team to Poland for a game with the Polish national team. He took a free day to go visit Auschwitz, a place he had not been back to in 65 years. I asked him why in the world he would ever want to go back. He said he wanted to stand in front of the camp and say out loud, "I'm still here and you're not."

A French woman I know used to tell me about her childhood friend, Old Uncle Johann, a German soldier from Bavaria, who deserted during the Nazi occupation of France. Her family burned his uniform, gave him peasant clothes, and let him work on their farm, hiding him from the Wehrmacht until the war was over. He never returned to Germany ever again.

There are many others, some of which are too gruesome to relate. Any era like that will have tens of millions of stories, all unimaginable to those of us who weren't alive to experience it.