Dutch migrants risked all to save Jewish baby

A Brisbane family has awarded Israel’s highest honour for risking their lives to save a Jewish baby during the Holocaust.

This simple black and white photo of woman and child embracing is a vision of enduring love, courageous resistance and profound humanity.

Klaasje van der Haar with Joseph/Joop, the Jewish boy she and her family took in during WWII while his parents went into hiding. Picture supplied.

Dutch woman Klaasje van der Haar and her two-year-old Jewish charge, Joseph Gokkes, would have been killed if discovered by the German forces occupying the north-eastern Netherlands during World War II.

Instead Klaasje and husband Jacob van der Haar protected Joseph alongside their own children for more than three years in Hoogeveen, reuniting him with his grateful parents Gila and Benjamin Gokkes, who emerged from hiding when the region was liberated in April 1945.

Left to right: Jacob van der Haar, second son Frits, wife Klaasje holding Joseph/Joop, the Jewish boy they took in while his parents hid in WWII, and their eldest son Jack. Not pictured is daugther Gertruida (Trudy). Pic supplied by granddaughter Ingrid Bradman, of Hervey Bay.

More than seven decades later, Hervey Bay teacher Ingrid Bradford will tonight accept one of Israel’s highest honours, the Righteous Among the Nations award for saving Jews during the Holocaust, on her late grandparents’ behalf. Joseph’s daughter Inbal, watching the private ceremony via video-conference from Israel with her mother Shifra, will speak on her late father’s behalf.

“I don’t think I can explain how much it means to us as a family. We all tear up when we talk about it, and the realisation of what Oma and Opa did during that time, the risk they took,’’ says Bradford, 53.

“If you were in their shoes, what would you have done? What they did was such a big risk and obviously shows their kindness, their empathy for these people.’’

The van der Haars’ granddaugther Ingrid Bradford, 53, pictured with her Oma’s war papers, will accept the Righteous Among the Nations Award being posthumously awarded to her grandparents Jacob and Klassje van der Haar, in Brisbane tonight. Photo: Paul Beutel.

Metal worker Jacob van der Haar was involved with the local resistance, who asked him to take in Joseph. The boy was renamed Joop and presented to his young children and the outside world as a child whose father was working in Germany and whose mother was too ill to care for him. In February 1945, the van der Haars gave refuge to Sonja Peters, a Jewish teen from Amsterdam who also stayed until the war ended.

The Gokke and van der Haar families stayed in contact, with Joseph regularly visiting his war-time protectors even after they immigrated to Brisbane in 1956. Klaasje and Jacob’s fourth child, born late in 1945, was named Joop in his honour.

Jacob and Klaasje van der Haar, of Holland, posthumously awarded Righteous Among the Nations for taking in 2yo Jewish boy Joop/Joseph in WWII, while his parents went into hiding.

Israel’s interim ambassador to Australia Tibor Shalev-Schlosser, who has also served in Italy and Germany, said no matter how many times he presided over such ceremonies, it was always emotional.

“Even ambassadors get chills, let me tell you. If there is something I do which I feel honoured by, it’s presenting an award like this to those who have saved Jewish lives. It is not just saving Jews, but risking their own life in order to save Jews,’’ he said.

“I can only express my wish and hope, at least by teaching and learning history, and trying to identify ourselves with other people in situations of need, terrible things like the Holocaust would never happen again in world history. This is what I can express as a message to all of us.’’

The ceremony will be live-streamed from 6pm - australianonlinenews.com.au/live-stream/