Ode to Pauline van Waasdijk en Hester van Lennep | Resistance heroes World War II

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In 1942, Hester van Lennep and Pauline van Waasdijk were about 25 and 26 years old. Hester was the youngest of 8 children. They were both beauticians and worked and lived at 484 Keizersgracht. In the year 1942, the persecution of Jews was in full swing. Early on during the occupation of Amsterdam, Jews were expelled from public spaces and required to wear a yellow star. Later in the war, Jews were rounded up and forced to live in separate neighborhoods or ghettos. Because of the deportations in the summer of 1942, more and more Jews knocked on the ladies' door for help. They kind of rolled into it, which is only possible if you are in possession of unwise guts and perseverance. 

The two housed children with acquaintances both inside and outside the city. The skin care center where they worked was also a hiding place for employees of the resistance newspaper Trouw. Hester herself also delivered the newspaper weekly with her cargo bicycle. When Jewish families were gathered at Amsterdam's city theater to be deported to Westerbork, the ladies began smuggling young children up to about 2 years old out of the queue via the nursery across the street. The children were smuggled away in laundry bags, bags and suitcases to hiding addresses through the Nursery School.

About 600 children were saved from death this way. In doing so, Pauline and Hester took an unprecedented “Leap of Faith” and changed the lives of those children forever. I can know because one of those children was my grandmother.