Amsterdam Names Bridge For Righteous Gentile
The City of Amsterdam will name one of its last remaining nameless bridges for Pieter Meerburg, who saved 350 Jewish children during the Holocaust.
Amsterdam Mayor Eberhard van der Laan and other dignitaries are scheduled to christen bridge 234 the Pieter Meerburg Bridge on Sept. 2.
As a student in Amsterdam in 1942, Meerburg was in charge of a network that smuggled Jewish children to safe houses across the Netherlands. Meerburg died in 2010. The network was known as the Amsterdam Student Group.
One method used by the group to camouflage the Jewish identity of babies they rescued was by allowing foster parents to adopt them. Female couriers working for the group would pretend the babies were their own, telling authorities they wanted to give the babies away for adoption because they did not know the identity of the father.
Yad Vashem, Israel’s authority for Holocaust commemoration, recognized Meerburg as Righteous Among the Nations in 1974.
Bridge 234 is situated at the Hortusplantsoen, some 200 yards from the Portuguese Synagogue and the Jewish Historical Museum.
Why I became the Forward’s Editor-in-Chief
- Alyssa Katz, Editor-in-Chief
You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.
And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
