Benno Schwarz (M / Netherlands, 1929), Holocaust survivor

Benno Schwarz (M / Netherlands, 1929), Holocaust survivor

Netty Schwarz / Netty Swartz Vanderpol (F / Netherlands, 1926), Holocaust survivor

• KEYWORDS : <Netherlands> <Theresienstadt> <May45 Train

Biography

Netty Schwarz (Nov 26, 1926) and Benno Schwarz (Jun 2, 1929) were born and raised in Amsterdam, Netherlands. When the Nazis invaded and occupied Holland in 1940, Netty was forced to attend a school for Jewish children, where Anne Frank was a classmate. In 1943 her father was arrested by the Nazis for assisting Allied pilots. The entire family (father, mother, grandmother, Netty and her brother Benno) was transported to Czechoslovakia, and spent more than a year in the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp in Terezin. In 1945, her family was released in a rare exchange of Jewish inmates for German POWs. A highly regarded needlepoint artist, Netty has exhibited widely.

After the war, Netty married Maurice Vanderpol (1922-2014), a renowned psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and an Holocaust survivor himself, who remained in hiding with his family in the Netherlands.