83 years later, Yad Vashem honors Dutch woman who saved Jewish baby during Holocaust

Jacqueline Meents-Lenstra, a Dutch woman, was posthumously honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations for saving Jewish infant Efraim Kochba during the Holocaust. In 1943, in Nazi-occupied Holland, Meents-Lenstra feigned pregnancy and hid Kochba as her own son after his biological Jewish parents, who later perished, entrusted him to her care. Kochba, now 83 and living in Israel, initiated the recognition for Meents-Lenstra, who meticulously documented his early development in a diary. After the war, Kochba was reunited with his uncle and aunt in Israel following a legal battle and his adoptive mother's death. Joel Zisenwine, director of the Righteous Among the Nations Department at Yad Vashem, stated, "We are on a tireless mission to award these unique individuals who did not conform to the laws and norms of the time to rescue Jews at their own peril."