Yellow cloth Star of David badge printed with Jood, Dutch for Jew, worn by a German Jewish refugee

Star of David badge used by Truusje Schoenfeld’s family in Amsterdam, Netherlands, during the German occupation. From April 29, 1942, Jews were required to wear a Judenstern on their outer clothing at all times to mark them as Jews. In May 1940, Amsterdam was occupied by Nazi Germany. In 1943, four year old Truusje and her parents, Walther and Margaretha, were ordered to report for deportation to a concentration camp. A neighbor, Mimi Grimberg da Silva Rosa, a German Protestant, who had hidden Truusje before, found them in the yard where they were being held and told the guard she had left something there. He let her in with her bike and as she went by the family, she picked Truusje up and put her in the basket, then rode out. She placed Truusje in hiding with a loving family outside Amsterdam, the De Bruins, who kept Truusje until the end of the war. Her parents were sent to Auschwitz extermination camp and killed. After the May 1945 liberation of the Netherlands, Mimi came and took Truusje away from the De Bruins. That summer, Truusje's maternal grandfather and uncle, Levi and Werner Katz, returned from Theresienstadt concentration camp. In November 1946, Truusje and her grandfather emigrated to the United States.