Figure 1.-- This is us with the Karp family and friends after the War (August 1945) The Karps were a happy, well off Dutch Jewish family before the War. Many German Jewish families had escaped to the Netherlands. But the Karps were Dutch Jews. They lost damily members, but fared fr better than most Dutch Jews. You can tell this was after the War because it was a real feast. And notice the can of American condensed milk--part of the bounty of American food briught to us by our anadian liberators. Click on the image to see who everyone is and who is missing.

By Harty van Engelen

From our kitchen window we could almost look into the kitchen of the van den Berg’s and one day we observed somebody in their kitchen whom we had not met before and wondered who that person was, but we kept quiet. Later I did find out when one day after school I found that person we had observed in the neighbour’s kitchen was in our own home. Mother told me that Leo Karp was going to stay with us for a while, but I had to be kept quiet and immediately I realized that Leo was a Jewish person. Following the first issue of my war manuscript, I also sent a copy to Leo’s wife Annie, then a widow to edit my story about her husband Leo. As a boy I knew what we were doing was dangerous. I had no idea, however, just how dangerous.

The Karps

Apparently Leo was conscripted in 1939 before the war and in his army unit had made a good friend by the name of Hans van den Berg, our neighbour’s son. Then one day in 1941 Leo was transported to Rouwveen, one of the German labour camps in the east of Holland and at the moment that a mass-transportation was going to take place. Labor camps in the East were a way the Germans used to kill Jews through hard labour and inadequate food. Labor camps in the West wee not as horrific. Transport to the East meant virtual sure death, although the NAZI death camps were not yet functioning. Leo escaped and found a temporary hiding address at his friend’s home. Now Leo was going to stay with us.

Somewhat later three more ‘guests’ arrived, Martin Bremer, his wife, Beppie Bremer-Karp (Leo’s sister) and their young son Bob, about 4 or 5 years old. Now, we were hiding four people and various precautions had to be re-established. Our living area on the main floor consisted out of two rooms, a larger living room at the front of the house and a former painter’s atelier, now an extra room in the back of the living room. The front window of the living room with a view unto the street could also be viewed from the outside of the street. Our first attempt to hide the view of the many people in our house, was blocked by drawing our curtains across the windows, and were kept in place during the remaining years of the war. Two other precautions followed when I helped my father in the creation of two hiding places, one giving direct access to an area below the main floor via a closet door and the second one in the master’s bedroom upstairs side-wall.

Ilse Jacobson

It was not long thereafter that my aunt Betsie Verhoeven appeared with a 14 or 15 year old girl, Ilse Jacobson, who wanted to visit her sister Eva, who also was in hiding in the same village of Soest, so now we had six unexpected guests in the house. After about two days my aunt and Ilse returned to the city of Utrecht.

Editorial Comment

Harty is too reserved to explain, but the family were taking an enormous risk in aiding Jews. It placed the family at terrible risk. As a result of our Holocaust Section, we get many comments and questions from readers. And one of the most common is why did so few people helped the Jews. One reason of course was anti-Semitism. Another reason was that anyone trying to help Jews was taking their lives in their hands as well as the lives of their family. If Harty's parents had been discovered by the Gestapo they would have been arrested. In Poland they may have been shot outright. In the Netherlands they would have been arrested and sent to a concentration camp, seriously affecting their ability to survive the War. The draconian German measures is why many families did not dare to help Jews. I am not sure what would have happened to the children in a family like Harty. But children who lost their parents had a much smaller chance of surviving the war, especially in th Netherlands as a result of the Dutch Hunger Winter.



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Created: 7:33 AM 12/23/2017
Spell checked: 9:57 PM 1/5/2018
Last updated: 9:57 PM 1/5/2018