December 29: Saving Dutch Jews

Johtje Vos, a Dutch woman who with her husband Aart hid three dozen Jews in their home during World War II, was born on this date in 1909. Living on a dead-end road backed by acres of forest in Laren, Netherlands, she would shepherd the people she was protecting through a 150-foot tunnel under her backyard and into the woods whenever the Gestapo came to her door. (A sympathetic police chief would tip them off by phone whenever a raid was imminent.) As many as 14 Jews hid in their home at any one time after the German invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940. Vos lived to be 97 and resided in Saugerties, New York from 1951 until her death in 2007.

“I don’t feel righteous, and we are certainly not heroes, because we didn’t sit at the table when the misery started and say, ‘O.K., now we are going to risk our lives to save some people.’ ” —Johtje Vos