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

KIBBUTZ NA’AN, Israel—The personal wartime diary, assiduously written by the young mother, detailed the infant’s early development, from his first smile to his weight and even a curl of his hair.

It was Jacqueline Meents-Lenstra’s first experience of parenthood. Still, the baby whose milestones she so meticulously recorded was, in fact, not her own, even as the diary itself tells the story of her devotion to the child.

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It was 1943 in Nazi-occupied Holland, and the Jewish baby boy, Efraim Kochba (born Ernst Bernard van Coevorden), had been entrusted to the Dutch Christian woman and her Jewish husband by a Jewish couple who were neighbors and who later perished in the Holocaust.

More than eight decades later, as the baby boy she saved was about to turn 83 in Israel, Meents-Lenstra was recognized earlier this month by Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial as Righteous Among the Nations, Israel’s highest honor for non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust.

“It was a closing of the circle for me,” Kochba told JNS last week.

For months during that fateful year for European Jewry, Meents-Lenstra walked around with a pillow on her stomach, feigning pregnancy so that when Kochba was born, she could check into an Amsterdam hospital with the help of underground activists without arousing the suspicion of her neighbors.

Baby Efraim was handed over to his adoptive mother, while his biological mother was whisked away to a safe house where his father was staying.

The baby would never see his biological mother again or ever meet his father, as both Martha van Coevorden and Ziegfried Fritz were later caught and died in the Holocaust.

“I always call that moment the eternal farewell,” Kochba recounted in the interview.

His adoptive father, Max, was himself arrested and taken to a transit camp but managed to escape and reunite with his wife and the baby.

The three survived the remainder of the war in hiding.

Legal battle and new life in Israel

After the war ended, Kochba’s uncle, who had been outside Holland, returned to Amsterdam and sought custody of the 2-year-old boy.

A legal battle followed, since the adoptive parents, who did not have children of their own, said that his biological parents had given them to understand that they could keep him if they did not return.

A court ruling in their favor was overturned on appeal after Kochba’s adoptive mother suddenly fell ill and died of cancer at 32.

“If that had not happened, I would surely have stayed in Holland and been Dutch,” Kochba said.

The 2-year-old was brought to Israel by his uncle and aunt, who raised him with their children on a communal farm in central Israel, where he lives today.

“Until the age of 13, I called them mother and father because I did not know the story,” Kochba said.

Reunion and a mission to honor

After completing his military service and learning of his past, Kochba traveled to the Netherlands, determined to meet his adoptive father.

“It was not a simple meeting,” he said. “It was charged at times. He had lost first his wife and then me.”

It was during that 1965 meeting that his adoptive father gave Kochba the diary that his adoptive mother had kept.

“I was so moved because I felt that I had something from that time because as a 2-year-old I did not remember anything,” he said.

Kochba, who went on to have four sons of his own, maintained contact with his adoptive father, who subsequently visited him in Israel over the years until his death.

The sprightly octogenarian survivor never forgot his adoptive mother, who had died all those years ago, and was determined to have her honored by Israel’s Holocaust memorial for her heroism, even posthumously.

Earlier this month, Kochba was notified by email that his adoptive mother had posthumously received the coveted recognition from Yad Vashem, where an independent public commission headed by a former Supreme Court justice decides who qualifies for the distinction.

Her name will now be engraved in the Garden of the Righteous at the Jerusalem hilltop memorial.

“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,” said Joel Zisenwine, director of the Righteous Among the Nations Department at Yad Vashem. “Even over 80 years later, we see this as our mission.”

More than 28,000 people from 51 countries have been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, with the Netherlands having the second-largest number of honorees.

Now Kochba is determined to track down his adoptive mother’s descendants so he can give them the certificate.

“It is theirs,” he said. “I owe it to them.”

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