Sary Melles was born Nannie Sari Louise Magnus in Groningen, the Netherlands, on 10 June 1928, the daughter of Noach (born 9 June 1886) and Roosje (née Jakobs, born 23 February 1893) Magnus, both of whom were originally from Emmen. Noach owned a textile business in Groningen, and in addition to Sari, the Magnuses had two other children, a daughter Henriette, or Hetty (born 16 August 1916, Emmen), and a son, Ibertus (born 23 September 1917, Emmen), who was known as Bert. In addition to working in the family business, Bert was also the leader of and tenor saxophonist in a jazz and swing band in the Netherlands, “The Plus Fours.” During the invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940, the Magnus family initially fled to Amsterdam, hoping to be able to find a way to get to England. Although they did engage the services of a captain who was willing to take them on his boat to England, the captain’s wife persuaded him not to do so at the last moment, and the Magnus family remained in Amsterdam for some time, before returning to Groningen.
In the fall of 1941, Bert Magnus decided to make a trip to the nearby city of Assen, to visit his uncle and pick up some clothing there, following the start of clothing rationing on 1 November. While on the train to Assen, he was overheard making comments critical of the occupation regime by a member of the NSB, the Dutch political party that collaborated with the Nazis. As a result, Bert was subsequently arrested by the Gestapo at his uncle’s home in Assen, and placed in a jail there from 2 November 1941 to 15 January 1942. After promises made to the Magnus family by the local head of the Gestapo that Bert would soon be released, he was instead transferred to a prison in the nearby German city of Leer, before being deported to Buchenwald, where he perished on 25 March 1942.
In the months that followed, the Magnus family decided it was necessary to go into hiding, and knowing that some Christian friends and neighbors would be willing to take them in, the family members initially split up, going into hiding in several different homes on 2 October 1942, before they eventually all rejoined at the home of Egbert Star, a retired headmaster of a Christian school in Godlinze. The Magnus family, which at that time included Noach and Roosje, their daughters Sari and Hetty, along with Hetty’s husband, Herman Goslinski, who had previously been interned in a labor camp, stayed with Star, who they referred to as “Opa Star” (“Grandpa Star”) until liberation on 17 April 1945. Initially, the Goslinskis’ newborn daughter, Bertie, was placed with another family, the Engelkamps. During that time, they slept in an attic space, but largely spent their days downstairs with Star. Once there was a Gestapo raid that they narrowly escaped by hiding in the attic, and in which Star was helped onto a neighbor’s balcony, in the fear that he might inadvertently reveal their presence, due to his unshakeable honesty. Star was recognized posthumously as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 1999.
During the occupation, the family of Roosje’s sister, Johanna van Oosten (born in Emmen, 27 May 1902), did not escape detection and arrest. While staying in Friesland in the early months of the occupation, they were caught listening to shortwave broadcasts of the BBC, and were arrested by the Gestapo. While Johanna’s husband and older son were sent to forced labor camps in the Netherlands, Johanna and her two younger sons were sent to Westerbork. Johanna was able to write to her sister, sending letters through an intermediary in Groningen, up to the time when she and her two boys were deported to Auschwitz. As the train was leaving Westerbork, she was able to throw from the train a postcard she had written to her sister’s family, asking that if any passersby found the postcard, to mail it to the address written on it, which someone did. Johanna van Oosten was killed at Auschwitz on 24 September 1943.
