Johan van Hulst
Dutch teacher who saved 600 Jewish children from the Nazis
JOHAN VAN HULST, who has died aged 107, was a Dutchman credited with saving up to 600 Jewish children from being sent to Nazi concentration camps during a daring rescue operation in the spring and summer of 1943 while his country was occupied by German forces.
The previous year he had been appointed principal of a Protestant teacher training college in Amsterdam, next door to the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a former theatre where Jews issued with deportation notices were ordered to assemble. There, children aged from a few months up to the age of 12 were separated from their families and sent to a creche that shared a hedge with Van Hulst’s college.
Approached by Henriëtte Pimentel, the creche director, van Hulst arranged for many of the children simply to be passed though the hedge and then concealed in a classroom.
Some parents were doubtful about having their children taken away in this manner, but others were convinced that it remained the only hope for their offspring. Walter Süskind, a German refugee who ran the theatre, was able to arrange for the children’s names to disappear from the Nazis’ lists.
Several methods were used to smuggle them on to safe houses: some were hidden in laundry baskets; others were ridden out on bicycles by trainee teachers acting as if the child were their own; at times a passing tram momentarily blocked the view of the Nazi guards as the children were whisked away.
Speaking just before his 100th birthday, van Hulst explained that, despite its proximity to the deportation centre, the Germans paid little attention to his college. “Probably because I deliberately acted like I didn’t want anything to do with the Hollandsche Schouwburg and the Jews,” he said.
On one occasion an official from the Education Ministry visited. Finding several children in the college he asked if they were Jewish. Van Hulst recalled that after a long silence he replied: “You don’t really expect me to answer that, do you?” To his relief, the inspector did nothing.
Van Hulst’s operation ended on September 23 1943 when Henriëtte Pimentel and 100 remaining children were deported to concentration camps. Knowing that the nursery was about to be closed, van Hulst had fled with as many children as possible.
Choosing who would accompany him was a decision that haunted him for the rest of his life. “You know for a fact that the children you leave behind are going to die,” he said. “I took 12 with me. Later on, I asked myself, why not 13?”
Johan Wilhelm van Hulst was born on January 28 1911, the son of a furniture upholsterer, and studied psychology and pedagogy at Vrije University in Amsterdam.
He started lecturing at the training college in 1938, soon becoming deputy principal. When funding cuts threatened the college’s future he raised the money to enable it to continue, as a result of which in 1942 he became principal.
After the war he also went into politics, serving in the Dutch Senate from 1956 to 1981 and as an MEP from 1961 to 1968. In 1972 he was named one of the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance centre in Israel. The site of his former teacher training college is now the Dutch National Holocaust Museum.
Van Hulst was an accomplished chess player. During the 1930s he chaired a chess club in Amsterdam that included members of the Jewish community; eventually they had to meet and play at their homes in secret. At the age of 99 he won a tournament for former Dutch parliamentarians.
Johan van Hulst’s wife, Anna Janette Donker, died in 2006. He is survived by their two daughters.
Johan van Hulst, born January 28 1911, died March 22 2018