Henriëtte Henriquez Pimentel (17 April 1876 – 17 September 1943) was a Dutch teacher and trained nurse who during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

headed a crèche in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

which cared for small children while their parents were otherwise occupied. Together with

Walter Süskind Walter Süskind (29 October 1906 – 28 February 1945) was a German Jew who helped about 600 Jewish children escape the Holocaust. He was a member of the ( or ) during the Second World War. Biography Süskind was born in Lüdenscheid in German ...

and

Johan van Hulst Johan Willem van Hulst (28 January 1911 – 22 March 2018) was a Dutch school director, university professor, author, politician, chess player and centenarian. In 1943, with the help of the Dutch resistance and students of the nearby University ...

, from around October 1942 she helped to save the lives of hundreds of Jewish infants by smuggling them into the homes of sympathetic host families. After being arrested by the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

s in April 1943, she was murdered in the

Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

the following September.

Biography

Born in

on 17 April 1876, Henriëtte Henriquez Pimentel was the youngest daughter of the diamond cutter Nathan Henriquez Pimentel (1837–1893) and Rachel Oppenheimer (1841–1929). She was of

Portuguese-Jewish Spanish and Portuguese Jews, also called Western Sephardim, Iberian Jews, or Peninsular Jews, are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardic Jews who are largely descended from Jews who lived as New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula during the i ...

descent. Together with her seven siblings, she was brought up in a well family. After following a teacher's training course, in the 1920s she worked as a governess and a kindergarten teacher in Bussum. As she had also trained as a nurse, in 1926 she was appointed director of the ''Vereeniging Zuigelingen-Inrichting en Kindertehuis'' (Crèche and Kindergarten Institute) in Amsterdam. Founded with support from a Jewish legacy, it was a large, well-fitted modern establishment on the Plantage Middenlaan which accommodated up to a hundred infants and toddlers who were cared for by a team of mainly Jewish staff. In 1941, as a result of the

German occupation German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly occupied and civil-occupied (including puppet governments) by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 an ...

, Pimentel was forced to dismiss her non-Jewish colleagues. By autumn 1942, the crèche had become a hostel accommodating Jewish children whose parents were taken to the

Hollandsche Schouwburg Hollandsche Schouwburg (; English: Hollandic Theatre) is a museum in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. History Originally, the Hollandsche Schouwburg was a Dutch theatre, but it was deemed a Jewish theatre in 1941 by Nazi occupiers, and it was later ...

on the other side of the street. Once a theatre, it had been converted into a centre for Jews scheduled for deportation to the Westerbork transit camp. The children in the crèche were also to be sent to Westerbork. In collaboration with

at the Jewish Council and

who ran the neighbouring teachers training college, Pimentel made arrangements for as many as possible to be smuggled out to families willing to look after them, some as far away as

Friesland Friesland (, ; official fry, Fryslân ), historically and traditionally known as Frisia, is a province of the Netherlands located in the country's northern part. It is situated west of Groningen, northwest of Drenthe and Overijssel, north of ...

or Limburg. For several months, the scheme went undetected as the children's names were removed from the transport schedules. Some of them were temporarily housed in the teacher's training college, while others were cared for by student groups or other resistance cells. Some sources estimate that up to a thousand were saved in this way, others around 500, but the large majority continued to be deported. The operation was code-named "N.V.", short for '' Naamloze Vennootschap'' meaning "limited company." The Nazis arrived at the crèche on 23 July 1943, removing all the remaining children and all the staff. Pimentel was sent first to Westerbork, then to Auschwitz where she was murdered around 17 September 1943.

References

External links

Photographs of the crèche
from ''Vrej Nederland'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Pimentel, Henriette 1876 births 1943 deaths Resistance members from Amsterdam 20th-century Dutch women educators 20th-century Dutch educators Dutch nurses Dutch Sephardi Jews Dutch people who died in Auschwitz concentration camp People who rescued Jews during the Holocaust Dutch Jews who died in the Holocaust Sephardi Jews who died in the Holocaust Dutch people of Portuguese-Jewish descent