The Woman Who Rescued Europe’s Children 1023
Truus Wijsmuller-Meyer may be the most important humanitarian most of us have never heard of. Faced with the horrors of the Holocaust, she wasn’t content to simply rescue 100 or even 1,000 lives. In less than one year, she saved 10,000. This Dutch social worker traveled right into Nazi Vienna and personally convinced Adolf Eichmann to let her take 600 Jewish children to England immediately. Insanely, he agreed. Even more insanely, Truus was just getting started.As Europe careened toward war, she turned up all over the continent, dealing with the Gestapo, bribing frontier guards, and generally acting like a one-woman anti-genocide machine. In Berlin, she joined forces with Jewish rescuer Recha Freier. When Germany steamrolled into the Netherlands, she returned to her home city of Amsterdam and immediately began smuggling children into Switzerland. Between November 1938 and September 1939, she got around 10,000 children to safety—the equivalent of rescuing the entire population of the Falkland Islands three times and then throwing in Vatican City for good measure. For her efforts, she was recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Israel—though we prefer the more accurate term “superwoman.”
Truus Wijsmuller-Meyer may be the most important humanitarian most of us have never heard of. Faced with the horrors of the Holocaust, she wasn’t content to simply rescue 100 or even 1,000 lives. In less than one year, she saved 10,000. This Dutch social worker traveled right into Nazi Vienna and personally convinced Adolf Eichmann to let her take 600 Jewish children to England immediately. Insanely, he agreed. Even more insanely, Truus was just getting started.As Europe careened toward war, she turned up all over the continent, dealing with the Gestapo, bribing frontier guards, and generally acting like a one-woman anti-genocide machine. In Berlin, she joined forces with Jewish rescuer Recha Freier. When Germany steamrolled into the Netherlands, she returned to her home city of Amsterdam and immediately began smuggling children into Switzerland. Between November 1938 and September 1939, she got around 10,000 children to safety—the equivalent of rescuing the entire population of the Falkland Islands three times and then throwing in Vatican City for good measure. For her efforts, she was recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Israel—though we prefer the more accurate term “superwoman.”
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