This umbrella was her identification mark, that she used while waiting for ‘her’ children at the border station in Emmerich, before she would get them to Holland. They were sent on these trains by their parents, grandparents or other family members, with no more than a small bag – the older children often in charge of looking after their younger brothers and sisters and sometimes (even though it was against the official rules) clutching a baby in their arms.įor these children Truus Wijsmuller became ‘The woman carrying an umbrella’. Until World War II officially started in May 1940, a total of around 10.000 children were saved this way. It became one of the first ‘Kinder transports’ that would take children from Vienna, Germany, Prague and Poland to Holland and England. She personally negotiated with the Germans, met with Adolf Eichmann in Vienna and when he ‘offered’ (challenged) her to organise a transport in a few days, gathering 600 Jewish children – without their parents – to leave Germany by train, she surprised him by indeed getting almost that big of a group together to be transported to safer parts of Europe. Truus Wijsmuller (1896-1978) was an ‘ordinary’ woman, who came into action when the lives of Jewish children were no longer protected and safe in many European countries after the Night of Broken Glass ('Kristall Nacht') on November 9/10, 1938.
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