Marion Philippina van Binsbergen
| Geslacht: | Vrouw | |
| Vader: | Jacob van Binsbergen | |
| Moeder: | Grace Marion Hyde | |
| Geboren: | 7 Nov 1920 | Amsterdam |
| Aantekeningen: | Pritchard Marion (1921 - ? ) Personal Information Last Name: Pritchard Binsbergen van First Name: Marion Date of Birth: 1921 Rescuer's fate: survived Nationality: THE NETHERLANDS Gender: Female Place during the war: Amsterdam, Noordholland, The Netherlands Huizen, Noordholland, The Netherlands Rescue Place: Amsterdam, Noordholland, The Netherlands Huizen, Noordholland, The Netherlands Rescue mode: Arranging shelter Hiding File number: File from the Collection of the Righteous Among the Nations Department (M.31.2/1993) Commemoration Date of Recognition: 31/03/1981 Righteous Commemorated with Tree/Wall of Honor: Tree Ceremony organized by Israeli diplomatic delegation in: The Hague, Netherlands Ceremony held in Yad Vashem: Yes Honorary Citizenship of the State of Israel: Yes Rescued Persons Polak, Fred Polak, First name unknown Polak, First name unknown Polak, First name unknown Herben, Jan Rescue Story Pritchard, Marion (van Binsbergen) In the early days of the war, Marion van Binsbergen, daughter of a Supreme Court jutice and an English mother, was studying at the Amsterdam School for Social Work. In the latter half of 1942, while riding home on her bicycle, she saw German soldiers rounding up a group of Jews. Children and infants were thrown into a car. Marion was furious and decided to dedicate herself to helping Jews. At the time, Marion was spending her Saturdays working as a volunteer in the so-called village for social reform, an Amsterdam institution where negligent parents were shown how to care for their children. When the head of the institution asked her to find a safe place for a Jewish boy, Jan Herben, Marion took him to her parents apartment on the Stadionkade. Shortly afterwards, together with several fellow students, she took 25 Jewish children to the Gooi, a district in North Holland. Her former high school teacher also sent Jewish children to her and Marion never hesitated to go to the town hall on a mission of disgrace to register a Jewish child as her own. At the end of 1942, Marion moved to Huizen, North Holland, where she lived in the back part of a house that belonged to a good friend of her parents, who lived in the front. The owners son-in-law asked Marion if she could take in a Jewish family, Fred Polak and his three children. Fred was forced to go into hiding after his non-Jewish wife, Edwina Louisa Moor, was arrested for her Resistance activities shortly after the birth of their third child. Fortunately, she later managed to escape. Marion agreed to take them in, and they stayed with her, with the tacit consent of the owner of the house, until the end of the war. A neighboring farmer brought them a liter of milk every day. When there were fears of a razzia, Fred and his children crept into a space they had dug in the floor under the table in front of the window, which Marion covered with a rug. The baby was given a sleeping pill and the family made it through many raids in this hideout. One night in 1944, a suspicious Dutch policeman came by in the middle of the night before Marion, who was just comforting the baby, had finished preparing the hideout. When he stood up, he found himself looking down the barrel of Marions gun, and she pulled the trigger without hesitation, killing him on the spot. Marion called a butcher she knew, who in turn knew a reliable undertaker. The two men disposed of the policemans body by switching it with another body in a coffin. He was quietly buried without anyone noticing it and there were no repercussions. Throughout western Holland the last year of the war was the year of the infamous hunger winter and Marion set out to look for food. She was stopped once by a German patrol as she was crossing a bridge and they confiscated her bicycle and the food she was carrying. In fluent German she told them what she thought of them and their leader, and to their amazement the soldiers gave her back her food and bicycle and escorted her across the bridge. After the war, Edwina Louisa Moor, who had been working for the Resistance in another part of the country, returned to her family. Marion left for Germany to help displaced Jews and there she met her husband. In 1947 they moved to the United States, where she lectured extensively about her experiences during the war. On March 31 1981, Yad Vashem recognized Marion Pritchard-van Binsbergen as Righteous Among the Nations. |
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| Huwelijkspartner: | Anton Arnold Pritchard |