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.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
