THE HAGUE, Netherlands (JTA) — Fourteen non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust were honored as righteous gentiles.
The title of Righteous Among the Nations — a distinction awarded by the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem — was given posthumously on Friday to Frederika Maria Segboer and Christina Segboer, sisters who hid Jews and helped them reach safety in Spain.
Earlier this month, Israeli diplomats conferred the title posthumously on another 12 recipients during a ceremony in The Hague.
At the Friday ceremony, Frederika’s daughter, Marijke van de Meent-Segboer, accepted the honor in Gorinchem, near Rotterdam, for her mother and aunt, who directed Jews they hid to the Westerweel group — a ring of resistance fighters who helped smuggle at least 210 Jews out of the Netherlands, as well as hundreds of non-Jews who were wanted by the Nazi occupation forces.
Many of the Jews smuggled by the group to Spain would move on to prestate Israel.
Among those honored at The Hague ceremony were Cornelia Kloppenburg and her husband, Leenderd Mostard, who worked as a chauffeur near The Hague. During the Holocaust, the couple took in a 4-year-old Jewish child, Micha Konig.
“They saved my life more than once and I will be grateful to them for as long as I live,” said Konig, 75, an author, at the ceremony at the municipal building.
Israel’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Haim Divon, conferred the honor on the couple.
The Netherlands, which had 140,000 Jews before the Holocaust, has over 5,350 Righteous Among the Nations — more than a fifth of the overall number in Yad Vashem’s records and more than any other country except Poland.
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