The Dutch couple Wessel and Ankje Ruwersma will be posthumously honored at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem as ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ for rescuing a Jewish girl during the Holocaust. A ceremony will take place in the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations in the presence of the survivor, Yehudit Levy, and two grandchildren of the couple. Wessel and Ankje Ruwersma lived in the village of Burum, in the district of Friesland in Northern Holland. During the Nazi German occupation, they hid two-year-old Yehudit Levy until April 1945. The girl’s father was murdered in Auschwitz but her mother, sister and brother survived the Holocaust.
Yehudit regarded her rescuers as her parents and her separation from the Ruwersmas was especially difficult. When the Levy family emigrated to Israel, Yehudit remained in contact with her rescuers and then later on, after their deaths, with their children. Over 22,700 individuals have been recognized so far as Righteous Among the Nations.
