Geertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer (21 April 1896, Alkmaar – 30 August 1978Wijsmuller-Meijer, Geertruida, Amsterdam) was a Dutch resistance fighter who brought Jewish children and adults into safety before and during World War II. Together with other people involved in the pre-war Kindertransport, she saved the lives of more than 10,000 Jewish children, fleeing antisemitism. She was honored as Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem. After the war she served on the Amsterdam city council.
Early life Geertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer, known as "Truus" to her family, was born in the city of Alkmaar. She was the firstborn child of Jacob Meijer, who worked in a drug store, and Hendrika Boer, a self-employed dressmaker. Truus came from a reformed liberal family. For two years she attended the School of Commerce. Her teachers described her as a "desperate case", "even though she is diligent". But gradually things got better, In 1913, the family moved to Amsterdam. Her parents taught her to stand up for people who deserve and need it. In 1919 after World War I, they set an example of helping the needy by taking into their home an Austrian boy who needed to recuperate.
A year later, she got her first job at a bank, where she met her future husband, the banker J. F. (Joop) Wijsmuller. They married in 1922 and lived on the Nassaukade in an apartment on the third floor. Wijsmuller stopped working, as was legally required.at the time. When it became clear that they were not having children, Wijsmuller became involved in social work. Through her social work she met Jewish women. Her husband supported her in all her activities. From 1933, they could always count on their live-in assistant, Cietje Hackmann, who did administration work and took care of children, if they stayed with them, when Wijsmuller was away from home.
Social and political work
Wijsmuller took on several unpaid jobs as a social worker, including as a coordinator for an association for homecare, and administrator for a daycare center for children of working women. From 1939 on, she was a board member of Beatrix-Oord, a sanatorium in Amsterdam. After the war she had it converted into a general hospital, where abortion was offered. She joined the Vereeniging voor Vrouwenbelangen en Gelijk Staatsburgerschap ("Association for Women's Interests and for Equal Citizenship"). There she met chairman Mies Boissevain-van Lennep, who would later become a resistance fighter.
In addition to this work, Wijsmuller was nominated as number 6 on the list of Liberal candidates for the Amsterdam city council elections in 1935. Because of the threat of war she founded the Korps Vrouwelijke Vrijwilligers (KVV; "Corps for Female Volunteers") in 1938, which she managed from her home. Soon she had an extensive network of people.
Work with Jewish children and refugees (1933 onward) From 1933 onward, when Hitler came to power in Germany, Wijsmuller traveled to Germany to fetch family members of Jewish acquaintances and bring them safely to the Netherlands. She did so for many years.
After Kristallnacht in 1938, rumours reached her that Jewish children were wandering unattended in the woods, so she went to the Dutch–German border to investigate. She smuggled a Yiddish-speaking Polish boy across the border under her skirts, and took him to Amsterdam.
On 17 November 1938, she took her first group of six Jewish children from the crowded waiting room of the Dutch consulate in Hamburg to the train. Customs attempted to remove them from the train, but Wijsmuller noticed that the Dutch Princess Juliana was on the coupe next to her. She threatened customs that she would involve the princess if there escalated matter, after which customs backed down.
In November 1938, the British Government decided to let Jewish children under the age of 17 from Nazi countries enter the United Kingdom for a temporary stay. Various organisations started working together in the Refugee Children's Movement (RCM) to take care of these children.
A visit to Eichmann On December 2, Wijsmuller received a request to come to the newly established Dutch Children's Committee in Amsterdam. During this visit, Norman Bentwich from England was also present. He asked her to travel to Vienna to meet a certain Dr. Eichner, which they believed was the name of Adolf Eichmann. She left to Vienna the same day.
Eichmann then was the Nazi official handling the forced "emigration" of Jews. It was thought that Wijsmuller, as a non-Jewish woman, might be able to get permission from the Nazis for the children to travel to Britain. Eichmann snarled at her, but Wijsmuller was imperturbable and fearless. She told him why she came. "Unbelievable, so rein-arisch und dann so verrückt!" ("so purely Aryan and then so crazy"), Eichmann concluded. He responded by giving her permission to travel with 600 children, but it had to happen by the upcoming Saturday, on Shabbat, a deadline he seemed to assume she would not be able to make.
She reserved trains at the station, and, with the help of the parents and Jewish organisations, succeeded in evacuating 600 children from Vienna on 10 December. The journey from Vienna to Hook of Holland took around 30 hours. One hundred of the children received shelter in the Netherlands, while 500 traveled on to Britain. In England, Wijsmuller had contact with Lola Hahn-Warburg (a chairwoman from the RCM, who asked in astonishment: "but you were only sent to talk?" when Wijsmuller arrived with 600 children. In the Netherlands, she cooperated with the social worker Gertrude van Tijn from the , belonging to the Committee for Jewish Refugees), Mies Boissevain-van Lennep and many others.
Wijsmullers' vigour was fuelled by the degrading way she had seen Jewish inhabitants treated in Vienna. In the Netherlands, however, nobody believed what she had seen.
December 1938 till September 1939 Kindertransport
From then until the outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939, Wijsmuller organised children's transports with children up to 17 years old from Nazi Germany and the annexed territories, mainly to Great Britain, but also to the Netherlands, Belgium and France. The trains from the south-east arrived via Emmerich on Tuesdays and Wednesdays; the trains from the north-east passed Bentheim on Thursdays.
After the first large transport, the work involved became more structured and a maximum of 150 children per transport was agreed upon. Several times a week, Wijsmuller traveled to Germany and Nazi-occupied territories to pick up children and arrange things on site with the organisers involved.
The children were allowed to take one suitcase, 10 German Marks and no photos or valuables. Mostly - but it was not always allowed- Jewish companions traveled with the children to the UK border, provided they all returned. Otherwise the transports would have ended. Once a group of weakened women and children of Sudeten Germans traveled with them.
This operation carried out under pressure required the cooperation of parents, guardians and various committees with volunteers in multiple cities and countries. Women took primary responsibility for the travel and accommodation of the children.
Wijsmuller was convinced of the urgency of these transports and gave momentum to the "Kindertransporte", as the evacuations came to be called. She maintained contacts with all of the parties involved in several countries, including the main committees in Vienna, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Berlin (from March 1939 in Prague and Dantzig ) and also the train and boat companies.
She always carried in her handbag a toothbrush, a bar of soap and a towel, as she could be asked at any time to travel. Wijsmuller took responsibility for the travel documents when traveling.. She arranged, that the border police and customs controls were carried out as much as possible on the way before the border. And under her guidance (or under that of one of the other Dutch women). That prevented delays.
On August 24, 1939, Wijsmuller was met at the border by a delegation from the Gestapo with a brass band. She was forced to celebrate with them that she had crossed the border at Bentheim for the 50th time.
Wijsmuller was later quoted saying that the success of the operation was mainly due to the Jewish committees in Vienna, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Berlin and Breslau (and later in Prague, Dantzig and Riga).Henriëtte Boas "Het begon in 1938", NIW 12-12-1938. A miracle of self-control in her eyes, because she realized how afraid people must have been to send their children into the world.Nearly 10.000 children from Nazi-occupied territory reached the safety of England. In the Netherlands approximately 1800 children from the Third Reich remained.
Other people organised evacuation transports too, for example Nicholas Winton and Recha Freier. Ultimately, 10,000 children up to 17 years old were saved from a certain death by being transported on a route via the Netherlands into Great Britain. Approximately 1800 refugee children from nazi-countries remained in the Netherlands.
The outbreak of the war between Great Britain and Germany in September 1939 put a stop to these transports, as from then on the borders to the UK were closed.
Children in the Burgerweeshuis From March 1939 onwards Wijsmuller was on the board of the Amsterdam orphanage Burgerweeshuis (now the Amsterdam Museum), which started to accommodate the refugee children. Wijsmuller and her husband were very involved with the children. The children came in small groups to stay overnight at the Wijsmullers'. Joop Wijsmuller took them on outings, for example to Artis, the Amsterdam zoo. The children called Wijsmuller "Tante Truus" (Auntie Truus).
June and July 1939 Refugee ships In June 1939, international negotiations took place in Antwerp among European countries about the distribution of nearly one thousand Jewish refugees on the MS St. Louis. Wijsmuller was part of the Dutch delegation, who boarded the ship and welcomed the 181 refugees on their arrival in the Netherlands. In July 1939 Wijsmuller was involved in the departure of children on the cargoship the Dora which eventually landed with 450 refugees in the then-British Mandatory Palestine.
September–December 1939 Last journeys from the German border The mobilisation disrupted train traffic and the border at Bentheim in Germany was closed. On 31 August Wijsmuller was told that a group of children from the Youth Aliyah was stuck in Kleve. She arranged travel documents, picked the children up in buses and took them to the boat in Hoek van Holland.
On 1 September, she received a telephone call from Germany that Orthodox boys were stranded at the station of Kleve. The Dutch Railways put together a train for her, consisting of dining cars. At the station at Kleve she also found a group of 300 Orthodox men from Galicia. She told the Germans that "after all, these are also boys","Verslag van een op grammofoonplaten opgenomen gesprek van Mw. Wijsmuller-Meijer" NIOD Archiefcollectie 1934A, p. 21. and got permission for them to leave. It was the last group to leave Nazi territory via Vlissingen to England.
In November and December 1939, she regularly collected Jewish refugees stranded in Bentheim (from Vienna and other places) who had papers for America. They left with the Holland America Line from Rotterdam.
September 1939 - May 1940 journeys to England and the south of France From September 1939 till May 1940, Wijsmuller helped Jewish children and adults stranded in the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden. She traveled with them to England, Spain, and the unoccupied parts of France. In Denmark she arranged an airplane and gasoline for the refugees. On these journeys (by plane to Amsterdam and from Amsterdam by plane to England, and by train to Marseille) she accompanied the refugees. She also arranged the necessary but hard-to-get travel documents.