How Dutch consul Jan Zwartendijk saved thousands of Jews
The telephone was still ringing.
He knew it couldn’t be a customer. Not on that day: May 29, 1940. Everyone in Kovno, then Lithuania’s capital, was too busy. They were either anxiously awaiting the arrival of the dreaded Soviet army or savoring the last few hours of Lithuania’s freedom.
Nor could it be his boss at Philips’s headquarters back in the Netherlands. International phone calls were too expensive even for one of the world’s largest manufacturers of radios and other electrical equipment.
The telephone was still ringing. Who was calling?
Zwartendijk reentered his office — and at that moment, the 43-year-old businessman from Holland entered Jewish history. For in just a few short months, “Mr. Radio Philips,” as Zwartendijk was known in Kovno, would be the catalyst for saving more than 2,000 Jewish lives, including the entire Mir Yeshivah, and receive a new moniker: the Angel of Curaçao.
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