When news of the pogrom later known as Kristallnacht spread across Europe in November 1938, most people responded with horror and helplessness. Geertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer chose to act. In the months that followed, this unassuming Dutch woman, known affectionately as „Truus” to her loved ones, managed to rescue over ten thousand Jewish children from the clutches of Nazi terror.
A Woman Shaped by Empathy
Truus was born on April 21, 1896, in the small Dutch town of Alkmaar. Her father worked at a pharmacy, and her mother was a seamstress. Teachers at the business school considered her a „hopeless case,” but admitted she was diligent. No one could have guessed that this average student would one day be remembered as a hero.
Truus’s parents instilled in her something more valuable than school knowledge. After World War I, they welcomed an exhausted Austrian boy in need of care into their home. This simple act of kindness left a lasting impression on young Geertruida.
In 1922, she married banker Joop Wijsmuller. The couple moved to an apartment on the third floor of Nassaukade in Amsterdam. When they found out they could not have children of their own, Truus dedicated all her energy to social work. Her husband unconditionally supported her in all her initiatives.
Building a Network of Contacts
Wijsmuller became involved in numerous charitable initiatives. She coordinated a home care association, administered a daycare center for working mothers’ children, and sat on the board of the Amsterdam sanatorium. She also participated in an organization fighting for women’s rights, where she met Mies Boissevain-van Lennep, who would later become a resistance activist.
In 1935, she ran for the Amsterdam city council representing the liberals. Three years later, sensing the looming threat of war, she founded the Women’s Volunteer Corps, managing it from her own apartment. In this way, she built a wide-ranging network of people ready to act.
This network would soon save thousands of lives. Since 1933, Truus made regular trips to Germany to help the families of Jewish acquaintances reach the Netherlands. She did this for years before the situation became truly dire.
Kristallnacht and Its Aftermath
The pogrom of November 9th to 10th, 1938, changed everything. Terrifying rumors reached Truus about Jewish children wandering alone in the woods near the Dutch-German border. Without waiting for confirmation, she immediately set out to verify these reports.
At the border, she encountered a young Polish boy speaking Yiddish. Without hesitation, she smuggled him into the Netherlands, hiding him under her skirts. She took the boy to Amsterdam, but knew it was only the beginning. Thousands of other children remained in mortal danger.
A week later, on November 17, 1938, Wijsmuller carried out her first official rescue action. She took six children from the overcrowded waiting room at the Dutch consulate and put them on a train. When customs officials tried to remove the young passengers, Truus noticed that Dutch Princess Juliana was traveling in a neighboring carriage. She threatened to involve a member of the royal family in the affair. The officials relented.
Aunt Truus and Her Children
For the thousands of children she saved, Geertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer became simply „Aunt Truus.” They remembered her as a tall, determined woman in a distinctive large hat. Sophie Scheinowitz, one of the rescued children, later recalled the moment when Truus approached her mother on the platform and said directly that she would take her children on the next transport.
That directness and determination became Wijsmuller’s trademarks. She did not ask, did not negotiate – she simply acted. She organized transports, arranged documents, and persuaded families to send their children into the unknown. She knew that, for many of the youngsters, parting with their parents would be their last memory of normal life.
Her efforts achieved results beyond all expectations. Together with other organizers of the Kindertransports, she saved the lives of over ten thousand Jewish children and teenagers. Each of them owed their lives to her courage, which allowed them to escape the machinery of the Holocaust.
Life After the War
After the end of World War II, Truus did not rest on her laurels. She sat on the Amsterdam city council, continuing her public service. She oversaw the transformation of the Beatrix-Oord sanatorium into a general hospital, one of the first in the Netherlands to offer abortion procedures.
The Israeli Yad Vashem Institute honored her with the title Righteous Among the Nations – the highest distinction awarded to those who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. Truus accepted it with her usual modesty.
Geertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer died on August 30, 1978, in Amsterdam, the city that served as the base for her rescue operations. She was eighty-two. Although history has too often forgotten her, in the memories of those she saved and their descendants she will forever remain Aunt Truus—the woman in the big hat who stood between them and destruction.
Rory Thornfield
Rory's grandfather left behind a wartime diary filled with accounts of a minor Burma skirmish that history books never mentioned. Reading it, Rory realized: behind every famous battle are dozens of forgotten struggles, each with its own human drama.
His preferred topics: The overlooked corners of military history – secondary campaigns, shadow battalions, local conflicts that never made headlines. From medieval sieges to twentieth-century expeditions, he focuses on the soldiers, not the generals. The people who faced impossible choices and carried those experiences forever.
Rory strips away the romanticism without losing respect for those who served. He combines tactical analysis with personal stories, examining human endurance and moral complexity rather than celebrating warfare. His writing is balanced, thoughtful, and deeply researched.
Outside work, Rory visits forgotten battlefields (now quiet farmland), photographs war memorials nobody tends anymore, and interviews veterans' families.