Overview
- Interview Summary
- Alice Paulus (née Rijskamp), born in 1915, describes being newly married with a five month old baby when she and her husband began their rescue activities; helping to rescue five people; one couple staying with them for two and a half years in hiding; how many of their friends would not help the Jews, thinking it much too dangerous; believing it was their Christian duty; the most stressful time during the war when her second child was born and there was no hospital, few medicines, and bombs dropping on the city; conducting rescue activities from October 1942 to the end of the war in May 1945, but continuing to host the couple because there was no place for them to live; how three of her husband’s brothers also hid Jews; speaking to church groups often when they first came to Ohio in 1957-1962; speaking in the pubic schools; the major influence religion now has on how she lives her life; and her admiration for Winston Churchill and the Holland leadership for being very honest.
- Interviewee
- Alice Paulus
- Interviewer
- Pearl M. Oliner
- Date
-
interview:
1984 September 17
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Council
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
2 sound cassettes (90 min.).
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Altruism. Christians--Netherlands. Hiding places--Netherlands. Holocaust survivors. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Netherlands--Personal narratives. Jews--Netherlands. Jews--Persecutions--Netherlands. Righteous Gentiles in the Holocaust. World War, 1939-1945--Deportations from Netherlands. World War, 1939-1945--Jews--Rescue--Netherlands. World War, 1939-1945--Women. Women--Personal narratives.
- Personal Name
- Paulus, Alice, 1915-
Administrative Notes
- Holder of Originals
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council interviewed Alice Paulus on September 17, 1984 as part of the international conference "Faith in Humankind: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust" held at the U. S. Department of State, Washington, DC.
- Funding Note
- The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2024-01-05 13:15:48
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn510799
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Oral history interview with Cornelia Knottnerus
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Oral history interview with Carl Heinz Kneuman
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Oral history interview with Rose Koenigsberg
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Oral history interview with Jane Laufer
Oral History
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Oral history interview with Margot Lawson
Oral History
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Oral history interview with Eva Lewin
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Oral history interview with Barbara Makuch
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Oral history interview with Alice Meilof
Oral History
Alice Meilof (née Prviksma), born in the Netherlands 20 miles from the German border, describes being 14 to 19 years of age during the war; her brothers and sisters; her father, who took in three Jewish boys brought to him by the underground; having to move the boys from time to time; how the boys helped her father in his work as a butcher; the hiding place in their house, which was simply a hole in the floor with a carpet rolled over it; the Germans never coming to search the house; her father’s motivation to take in the Jewish boys because of his belief in the Christian Reformed concept of “to do something good is normal”; her mother providing farm food to people who had escaped the bigger cities of Rotterdam and Amsterdam; how her father was in command of a region of the underground; her work as a messenger; how nothing could be spoken out loud since neighbors or others might overhear and report their activities; the lack of food in the big cities such that people were eating tulip bulbs and their pets; housing five policemen for two nights; her emotions when they were liberated by the Canadians; and still feeling sorry for the German soldiers in their defeat.
Oral history interview with Halina Melnyczuk
Oral History
Halina Sophia Melnyczuk (née Zahaikiewicz), born February 21, 1921 in Przemysl, Poland, describes her two brothers and one sister; growing up in a vaguely religious Ukrainian Catholic family that was not political; living in an apartment building where they were the only non-Jews; how when the war started in 1939 they had as many as 30 Jews living with them and their housekeeper threatened to turn them in to the Nazis; moving to another apartment in 1942 because the old one had heavy damage from shelling; how the new apartment was across from the police station; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1943 and taking in a young couple, Edek and Eda Scheffler, whom they hid by camouflaging the pantry to look like bookshelves; sharing their rations and sometimes selling items from their apartment to buy meat; instances when it seemed they’d been found out; being on the list to be transported to a concentration camp in Siberia but deciding to emigrate instead; leaving everything behind, including the Schefflers, who now live in Israel; living in Kraków, Poland; fleeing to Vienna, Austria in 1944; how the war did not change her religious beliefs but left her more tolerant of other people; and her belief that the most important thing is to do good deeds.
Oral history interview with Tjitske Mulder
Oral History
Tjitske Mulder (née Hoogeveen), born June 23, 1909 in Westermeer, Netherlands, describes growing up in a very close family with five brothers and two sisters; her father, who was a dairy farmer and a member of an anti-revolutionary party and the underground; her father teaching her that the most important attribute was to be independent and to ignore social class structures; getting married in Bergum, Netherlands in 1930 to a barber; having two sons in the small city of Sneek, Netherlands during the war years; how in Sneek Jews were always well thought of; her and her husband’s first rescue activity moving a Jewish girl from one hiding place to another; hiding the parents of the Jewish girl, whom the Gestapo were chasing; an interesting subterfuge they used when the Gestapo came to their house; remaining friends with the girl, Lydia; speaking frequently publicly about their activities; their children and grandchildren, who are as strongly supportive of what they did during the war; their willingness to help anyone, whether they knew them or not, and doing so without regret; the friendship that grew between the two families when they lived together, praying, singing, and arguing together; her husband’s belief that Hitler was doing wrong by the Jews and how his own inner voice told him to help, as the Bible was his guide; and how they were given no money to keep the Jews in hiding.
Oral history interview with Wanda Ollbryska
Oral History
Oral history interview with Irene Opdyke
Oral History
Irene Opdyke, born in Kozienice, Poland, describes growing up in a close, Catholic family with four younger sisters, all of whom were taught always to keep an open heart, to be helpful; joining the Polish army then hiding in the forest after Poland was defeated; being very brutally treated by Russian troops and eventually being sent to an ammunitions factory in Poland, where she acted as a server; being sent to the front in Poland, close to the Russian border where she witnessed horrendous brutalities carried out on Jewish families; being moved again to work in the laundry room of about 300 Germans and the local head of the Gestapo in Ternopil', Ukraine; befriending 12 Jews working there and creating an information network; becoming the housekeeper to a German major and managing to hide Jews in the cellar in an underground area under the gazebo; the liquidation of the ghetto in early 1943 and taking the 12 Jews to the forest to join others in hiding; building a bunker where the Jews stayed until the Russian Army liberated them; joining the Polish partisans to help in the fight against the Russians and eventually being arrested and put in detention; escaping by jumping out a window; going to Krakow, Poland; going to the United States in 1949 and becoming a US citizen; working in the garment center in NYC; getting married to a man who worked for the United Nations; and the tree planted in her honor on the Avenue of the Righteous in Jerusalem.
Oral history interview with Jacob Oversloot
Oral History
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Oral history interview with Marion Pritchard
Oral History
Marion Pritchard, born November 7, 1920 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, describes her apolitical family; her brother; her family’s Jewish friends; how her father was upset with the Dutch government because they didn’t just open their borders to refugees; her work finding foster homes for Jewish children and also hiding Jews; how her family did not know all of what she was doing, which was for their safety; the widespread antisemitism in Holland; being imprisoned for six months in a jail in Amsterdam after being caught with friends who put out an anti-Nazi newssheet; being threatened and intimidated, but not physically abused; leaving Holland in 1945 to work with the United Nations in displaced persons camps in Germany; becoming active with Zionists trying get to Israel; going to the United States in 1947; her thoughts on Elie Wiesel; her husband, who was a liberator at Buchenwald; and her belief that you must do the right thing if you can find out what the right thing is.
Oral history interview with Mary Barys Szul
Oral History
Mary Szul (née Barys), born in 1928, describes being 15 years old and living in a little village in Poland with her mother, brother, and sister at the start of the war; rescuing a total of four people, the first being a widow with two small children, whom they hid in the attic in the summer and in a bunker built under straw in the barn in the winter; being caught by the Germans and being badly beaten then jailed for two weeks; being freed and finding her way home, a 70 mile trek; going to Austria to a displaced persons camp; going in 1948 to Canada, where she found the Jews she had rescued and ended up living with them as family; the reason she got involved in rescue activities; how her rescue activities started in May 1943 and continued for 18 months; her neighbors’ disapproving of her family’s rescue activities when they found out about them after the war; and her life now in London, Ontario.
Oral history interview with Magda Trocme
Oral History
Magda Trocme, born in 1901, describes her rescue activities during WWII in the French village of Le Chambon sur Lignon; Philip Hallie’s book, “Lest innocent blood be shed,” which describes the French village Le Chambon as a safe haven for Jewish escapees; working with the Quakers; one of their first rescued Jews, Hanna Hirsch, and the quasi-underground arrangement for refugees, so that she eventually ended up in Switzerland and then Queens, New York after the war; how the French people got involved with rescue activities and inspired others to help; the daily routine during the war and the large numbers of refugees who were sharing their house; the difficulty in explaining the rescue activities to their children so that the refugees wouldn’t be discovered and how it was a matter of constant problem-solving and resisting in small ways; being very aware of the danger they were in but never considering not helping; her husband’s arrest because he was the organizer of the rescue activities and most responsible; her husband’s release after the war was over; leaving Le Chambon in 1960 and moving first to Versailles and later to Geneva, where her husband was a minister; and visiting Yad Vashem in Israel, where a tree was planted in her husband’s honor.
Oral history interview with Andrew van Schilfgaarde
Oral History
Andrew van Schilfgaarde, born in 1933 in The Hague, Netherlands, describes growing up one of seven children; being members of the Christian Community Church but not being particularly religious or political, though they did vote; having many Jewish friends; being aware of the persecution against Jews as his friends dropped out of school and were deported; the vacated homes being looted or taken over by the Germans; his attempts to listen to the BBC and being caught with a radio, which was a forbidden item; stealing food to survive and selling the food back on the black market; hiding Jews for a few days in the attic before they went on to another house, then to France, and then to England; how his neighbors were a problem because they might report them; the role of resistance groups as the contact point for the rescue activities; how human values change due to starvation; leaving Holland in 1956 and going to the United States; having a landscape business then working in the food and drink business; not discussing his wartime experiences with his wife or friends; his life-philosophy to live day by day; and knowing that the past cannot be changed but something like the Holocaust should never happen again.
Oral history interview with Ann van Veldhuizen
Oral History
Oral history interview with Johanna Vos
Oral History
Johanna Vos, born December 29, 1909 in Amersfoort, Netherlands, discusses her upbringing and the influence her parents had on her life; her family’s religious background in the Christian Reformed Church; moving frequently as a result of her father’s job as a military officer but living in Leiden for most of her school years; dating a Jewish boy at age seventeen despite her parents’ disapproval; leaving home at age 20 to go to Paris, France; studying at the Sorbonne and working in Paris as a freelance journalist and as a delivery person for a Dutch grocer; marrying a German artist against her parents’ wishes and later divorcing; living in Laren, Holland during World War II; marrying her second husband and having children; becoming involved in activities to help Jews, first by helping her Jewish friends and then joining the Dutch underground; wearing the Star of David in solidarity with the Jewish population; falsifying papers and smuggling the belongings of German Jewish refugees into the Netherlands; serving as a messenger; hiding more than 36 people in her home, most of whom were Jews but some of whom were intellectuals or others targeted by the Nazis; her husband picking up weapons airdropped by Allied forces for the resistance; the killing of an author by the Gestapo and the capture of a fellow member of the underground; being confronted by the Gestapo at her home; facing the challenge of hiding small children who did not fully understand their situation; coping with the mental breakdown of a woman hiding in her home; her husband’s pension through the Stichting 1940-1945 and his suffering from “Twenty Year Syndrome;” and her thoughts about her actions during the war.
Oral history interview with Theresa Weerstra
Oral History
Theresa Weerstra, born August 6, 1907 in Wijckel, Netherlands, describes her father Hans Peopjes, who was a fisherman, and her mother Arendje Roskan; her eight younger siblings, who were all girls; growing up in a family that was not religious but taught her to be generous to everything that is living, from flowers to human beings and never to be prejudiced; living in IJlst in Freisland province when the war broke out; getting married to Martin in 1930 and moving to Chicago, IL that same year during the recession but returning home soon thereafter; living two miles from the Nazi headquarters for the Netherlands; living near a large antisemitic population; taking in an orphaned young Jewish girl, which opened the door to helping many, many more Jews, some of whom she remains in contact with; hiding places they created in their home; housing 18 Jews at one point; receiving help from friends, who got them extra ration cards; delivering a baby born to one of the Jewish couples; the large network of people working in the rescue effort and using codes to relay messages since as there was only one phone in town; and how she is still upset by the Holocaust and does not consider herself a hero.
