Biography
Frieda Belinfante was the daughter of a Jewish, Sephardic father, Aron Belinfante and a Dutch mother, Georgine Antoinette Hesse. She was born on May 10, 1904 in Amsterdam where her father was a pianist. She had three siblings, Renee, Robert and Dorothea (Dolly). Frieda Belinfante also studied music and became a professional cellist and conductor. Though briefly married to the flutist, Jo Veldkamp, from the age of sixteen, Frieda was openly lesbian. In the late 1930s, Frieda began her own chamber orchestra which she conducted for two seasons. After the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands, Frieda discontinued her orchestra. She joined the gay resistance group called the CKC and worked falsifying identity cards and arranging hiding places for Jews and others sought by the Nazis. Together with William Arondeus, she participated in the planning of the destruction of the Amsterdam Population Registry on March 27, 1943. That July the Nazis executed twelve others who had participated in the attack. In December, Belinfante escaped to Switzerland via Belgium and France. After the war, she returned briefly to Amsterdam and then immigrated to the United States in 1947 and became a symphony conductor in Hollywood. She passed away on April 26, 1995.
