Long Beach resident Hank Snapper begins by reminding his visitor, “This is my parents' story, not mine.” And what a story it is. It begins in an unassuming household, the Snapper family of seven, living in the village of Naaldwijk, in Holland during World War II. Harry Snapper works as the Director of the local government Labor Bureau. With five children, Martha Snapper has her hands full at home. And there's a housekeeper, Rika Borstell, known to the five children as Juff (Miss), giving Mom a hand. Observant Calvinists, the Snapper family attends Church twice every Sunday. But things in the Snapper household are not what they seem to be.
Harry Snapper is actually a local leader in the Dutch resistance, later known as the Dutch Underground. In 1943, when Dutch men were called up for forced labor in Germany, Harry organized a burglary of his own offices in order to destroy the records of the local registered workers. And Rika Borstell, the Snappers' housekeeper, Juff, is
actually Rosetta De Hartog, part of a Jewish family of seven that the Snappers had hidden in plain sight.
In 1942, Harry Snapper met the De Hartog family. Levi and Rosetta De Hartog were caretakers of the Jewish cemetery in Rotterdam, about 35 miles away from the Snappers' village. While the Germans had already rounded up many of the Jewish families in Holland, the De Hartogs had been allowed to stay in their home longer than most, due to the increasing number of Jewish funerals. But by 1942, Jews in Holland
When World War II began, there were 150,000 Jews living in Holland. By the war's end, there were just 35,000 survivors. In 2006, 30 members of the Snapper family and 76 members of the De Hartog family, including Truus, one of the De Hartog daughters whom had visited the Snapper household each evening to see her mother, gathered in Israel to participate in the ceremony at Yad Vashem that recognized Harry and Martha Snapper as Righteous Among the Nations.
[PROFILE | Harry & Martha Snapper]
Harry & Martha Snapper
Righteous Gentiles
The Snapper family in Holland during World War II