Lennie Kropveld Jade photograph collection

Lena (Lennie) Kropveld was born on October 12, 1922, in Aalten, Netherlands, to Aaron and Bertha Maas Kropveld. Aaron was born on February 26, 1896, in Weerdingermond. He owned a non-kosher slaughterhouse and meat export business and worked closely with local farmers. Bertha was born on February 23, 1895, in Winterswijk. The couple married on April 24, 1919, in Winterswijk. Lennie was the third of five children: Isaac (Jesse), born 1919; Abraham, born 1920; Simon, born 1926; and David. The Kropveld family was observant, kept kosher, and attended weekly services. They lived a comfortable life. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938, many Jewish children were sent from Germany and Austria to stay with Jewish families in the Netherlands. There were three girls from Germany living with the Kropveld family in 1940: Carla, Ruth and Margot.

Germany invaded the Netherlands on May 10, 1940. In January 1941, the Germans required that all Jews register with local authorities. The Germans soon began taking Jewish men for labor camps. In Aalten, the Germans would go to Jewish homes at night, so Lennie’s father and brothers spent their nights in the homes of non-Jewish friends to avoid being arrested. On April 29, 1942, all Jews were required to wear the yellow Star of David badges. In summer 1942, the Germans began deporting the Jewish population. Aaron made arrangements for the family to go into hiding with three trusted non-Jewish farmers. Lennie had been engaged to the rabbi of the Aalten synagogue, Rabbi Yitzchak Jedwab, since before the invasion. Yitzchak was born in December 1912 in Germany. Aaron insisted that Lennie and Yitzchak be married before they go into hiding together. They were wed in secret in March 1942 and had a religious ceremony on July 1 in Winterswijk. Lennie’s parents and four brothers went into hiding on the day of her marriage, while she and Yitzchak remained in town because Yitzchak did not want to leave his congregants.

In October 1942, Lennie and Yitzchak went into hiding at a farm, along with Ruth and Margot. Aaron had arranged to pay the farmer for hiding them. In addition to the payment, the farmer’s wife made Lennie sew clothes for her and her child. They lived in a small room and had to share one bed. The farmer had built a small room behind the closet where they could hide if there were visitors. Lennie became pregnant while in hiding and had a very difficult pregnancy. Food was very scarce, and Yitzchak insisted they stay kosher. There were constant bombings that required them to hide in a hole in the ground outside for shelter. The farmer’s sister-in-law, a Nazi sympathizer, was staying with the family when Lennie went into labor, so Lennie and Yitzchak hid in the hay loft of the barn. Lennie could not make any noise during the delivery for fear of alerting the woman to their presence and had to cover her face with a pillow. The farmer’s wife did not want a doctor to come help with the delivery, but after days of labor, Lennie was very ill and Yitzchak insisted. On September 20, 1943, Lennie gave birth to their son. When the infant was twelve hours old, he was dressed in clothes made by Lennie, placed in a cardboard box, and given to the Dutch underground to be placed in hiding. The resistance left him on the doorstep of Jan Wikkerink, a resistance leader. He and his wife Dela had eight children of their own, but they took the baby in and named him Jan Willem Herfstein. Lennie was not told where he was taken, but was assured that he was safe.

Following the birth, Lennie and Yitzchak were moved to another hiding place in Lintelo. This hiding place was not safe and, after three months, the resistance moved them to a third hiding place in Aalten. They were taken into the city in a wagon covered with hay and hidden in the home of Bernard and Cynthia Wever. Bernard, a carpenter, built them a room behind the closet where they spent all of their time. Toward the end of the war, two German soldiers were billeted in the Wever home. While the soldiers were in the house, Lennie and Yitzchak stayed in chairs in their hidden room and could not move or make any noise, sometimes for days. Aalten was liberated by British forces in March 1945, during Passover. A British soldier named Denis Taylor gave Lennie matzah on the day they were liberated. Lennie and Yitzchak settled into a house next to the synagogue and met their two and a half year old son several times while he was still living with the Winkkerinks. He was returned to his parents a few weeks later, when they had a home of their own. Lennie and Yitzchak had a bris for their son and named him Aaron Jan Jedwab, after Lennie’s father and Aaron’s foster father. It was a difficult adjustment for him, so one of his foster sisters lived with the family for nearly a year to help with his transition. The Jedwabs remained in contact with Wikkerink family.

The rest of the Netherlands was liberated on May 5, 1945, and Germany surrendered on May 7. Lennie’s parents and four brothers had survived in hiding. Lennie’s 83 year old maternal grandmother had been deported and murdered in a concentration camp. There were only fifteen to twenty people left in Yitzchak’s congregation, so Lennie, Yitzchak, and Aaron moved to Deventer where there was a larger Jewish population. Yitzchak’s brother-in-law visited them from the United States and convinced them that they could not have a good Jewish life in the Netherlands, so they immigrated to the United States in May 1948. They Americanized their last name to Jade, and Yitzchak changed his first name to John. On July 2, 1948, Lennie gave birth to a daughter. The family settled in Cincinnati. Aaron graduated law school and opened his own practice. Yitzchak, age 58, died in Cincinnati in April 1971. The Wikkerinks were named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 1978. In November 1989, Lennie married Raymond Kantor from Czestochowa, Poland, who survived the Buchenwald, Hrubieszow, and Tschenstochau concentration camps.