The story of Marion Cassirer (née Kaufmann)

Based on the Holocaust Center for Humanity, Seattle, Washington; Lina Kaufmann's war memories (1960, family collection), the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C, and the biography of Boy Edgar by Marie-Claire Melzer and Marike Klomp; Boy Edgar: Het dubbelleven van een alleskunner, 2015.

Marion Irene Kaufmann (later Cassirer) was the daughter of Lina and Walter Bruno Kaufmann. She was born on 28 November 1936 in Berlin, where her parents owned two electrical repair and appliance businesses.

Group portrait of women and children at the Jewish Kinderheim [children’s home] at Fehrbelliner Strasse 92, Berlin. Marion Kaufmann is on the right. (USHMM Photograph #05717)

 

During the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938 these businesses were destroyed, and the family moved into the Jüdisches Kinderheim. Lina helped in the kitchen and Walter worked as the caretaker. They stayed at the children’s home until early 1941, when they were assigned to forced labour in the city. Lina worked at the Siemens plant making field telephones. Walter was sent to the railway station, where he gathered deportees’ luggage for the warehouses. He was also sent to deportees’ homes to confiscate their belongings, so he had no illusions that the deportees would ever come back.

Walter and Lina had been making arrangements for false papers and an escape to Switzerland. They were to escape on 5 October 1942. 3 days before their planned escape, Walter had spent the night at the orphanage and that night, soldiers came and took the residents away in trucks, including Walter and all the children. Lina learned of this from a neighbor as she approached the orphanage with Marion the next morning. She went to a German friend's house, took off her yellow star, and luckily had her false postal ID with the name of Emmy Erdmann. In the evening, she went with Marion back to their apartment for some jewelry and money, but she could see the curtains were drawn and someone had been there or was there waiting for them. Lina fled with Marion to Trier, Walter's hometown where his sister and family still lived.

When they arrived in Trier it became clear that Lina and Marion could not stay. Deportations were happening daily, and Walter's sister and family could not help them. Directions to the Dutch border came through an unlikely chain of contacts: the Dutch boyfriend of the daughter of a former household helper of Walter's sister. On the way, Lina and Marion ran into a group of German soldiers near the border crossing. Rather than flee, Lina went up to them and said she was on her way to meet her husband, who was in the army, and needed directions. They accepted her story, told her to return the way she had come, and once out of sight, Lina and Marion circled back to the border. They reached Maastricht, a Dutch border town, but they found the Netherlands under German control. Lina walked into a church where a clergyman suggested she go to Amsterdam and contact the Jewish Council.

There they met Max and Ans Knap. Ans was a doctor and Max a lawyer who was an information officer for the Jewish Council and in secret, was a leader in the Dutch Underground. In October 1942, the Knaps placed Lina in hiding with 7 Dutch Jews in Amsterdam and they placed Marion with Dr. Boy and Mia Edgar, leaders of an Amsterdam underground cell. Every six weeks Mia took Marion to a friend who bleached her hair red.

In March 1943, on the way to the friend’s home, police stopped Mia and demanded to know who she and Marion were. Determining that Marion was not her child and was Jewish, they released Mia but arrested Marion, who was sent to the Hollandsche Schouwburg theatre in Amsterdam, where Jews were assembled and deported to the death camps. Across the street was the crèche (day-care) where all Jewish children under 12 were separated from their parents and held before deportation. The police did not want to deport Marion without her parents and held her until they could find out her real name and where her parents were. She gave nothing away and stayed in the crèche for about six weeks.

Marion became part of one of the largest child-rescue operations of the Holocaust. The director of the crèche, the director of the teacher's training school a few doors down and the director of the Schouwburg worked together with childminders and resistance groups to smuggle hundreds of Jewish children out of the building, hidden in bags and boxes, walked out on group outings, or slipped out while a passing tram blocked the guards’ view from the theatre. (See the Dutch Resistance Museum’s account: Jewish children rescued from deportation.) They smuggled out approximately 600 children; Marion, by now known as “Renie”, was one of those 600. Mia took her to the railway station, and Boy went with her to a small town named Heumen where he was practicing medicine. There he placed her with Hend and Mina de Kleijn. Hend was a war hero of the Dutch resistance against the German occupation and later became an author. When it became too dangerous to stay there, Boy Edgar took Marion to the farm of Joannes (Jan) and Catharina Beelen. The Beelens had three older boys and two younger girls, Rie and Grada, who became Marion’s foster siblings. Marion ("Renie") stayed with the family for the duration of the war during which she and the family survived a number of searches by Nazi patrols.

The Beelens’ area was liberated in September 1944 during Operation Market Garden and was never re-occupied by the Germans. After the liberation Marion stayed with the Beelen family until mid-1945, when Lina found Marion with the help of the International Red Cross. Lina had survived the war in hiding, at first in a small attic in Amsterdam with 7 Dutch Jews, and shortly after, in a small room with the Wesselius family in Oude Wetering. When the Allies won the war on May 5, 1945, Lina searched and found Marion, and the Beelens took her in, nurtured her back to health, and gave time for Marion and Lina to reconnect. Lina and Marion returned to Amsterdam to apply for visas. Lina worked as a housekeeper and Marion attended the Rosh Pina Hebrew Day School. In February 1949 Lina and Marion emigrated to the United States with the help of HIAS under the sponsorship of Walter's brother.

In 2018, Dr. Boy Edgar and Joannes and Catharina Beelen were awarded Yad Vashem recognition as Righteous Among Nations for their roles in saving Marion.

Lina and Marion Kaufmann in Amsterdam, December 1945

Marion, visiting her foster sisters Rie and Grada at the farm, 1948

Note: Marion told her story in several versions over her life; she was very young during the war. This account has been checked against Lina Kaufmann’s written memories (1960), the Beelen family’s recollections and Boy Edgar’s biography. Corrections have also been sent to the USHMM.