Dutch hero who saved 150 Jews in WWII dead at 96
Dutch hero Marion Pritchard-Van Binsbergen died at the age of 06 in Washington on December 11th, was announced today. During World War II she rescued 150 Jews from the Holocaust by finding them places to hide, helping them with the necessary documents and in one case killing a police officer who was threatening a family and hiding his body, the Volkskrant reports.
She was born Marion van Binsbergen in Amsterdam in 1920. When the war started in May 1940, she was studying social sciences at the University of Amsterdam. She was arrested by the Germans the first time in 1941, for translating and spreading reports from British radio stations with other students. She was sentenced to 7 months in prison
A year later, when the Germans began with the mass deportation of Jews, Marion intervened again. Along with 10 friends, she started a resistance that helped Jews find places to hide, getting them food stamps and false identities. She also pretended to be the unmarried mother of a Jewish baby.
Marion also managed to hide Fred Polak and his three children for over three years in a home outside Amsterdam. When Germans raided the home with a Dutch police officer, she hid the Jewish family under the floor. The Dutch officer returned and found the family. Marion shot him to protect them and hid his body, with the help of a local mortician, by burying it in a coffin that already contained someone else.
After the war she joined the United Nations and helped refugees who were displaced from their home. Here she met her husband Anton Pritchard, a US Army officer. They moved to the United States, where she continued to work with refugees.
