Jacob Penraat (1918 - 2006)

Born 11 Apr 1918 in Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Nederland

Ancestors

Husband of Eleonore Dekker — married 17 Apr 1940 (to 4 Jul 1950) in Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Nederland

Husband of Ottoline Henriette Gerarde Jongejans — married 17 Oct 1950 in Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

Died 25 Jun 2006 at age 88 in Catskill, Greene County, New York, USA

Biography

Architect and Industrial Engineer, he is remembered by the 406 Jews that he helped escape Nazi occupied Netherlands during World War II. Born in the Netherlands, he was 18 years old when the German Army conquered neutral Netherlands in 1940. Shocked when the Nazis began rounding up his Jewish neighbors, he joined the Resistance, and began forging identity cards for Jews, showing them to be ordinary Dutch citizens, rather than Jews as the German issued identity cards showed. Several months later, he was arrested, held in prison and tortured for several months, but refused to divulge any information. Eventually, the German authorities released him, and he quickly rejoined the Resistance, where they disguised Jews as construction workers to obtain German travel permits to a phony French construction site. Once in France, Penraat arranged for their transfer to French Resistance fighters, who then moved the Jews to neutral Spain. Penraat made over 20 trips to France ferrying Dutch Jews to the French Underground; had he been discovered, he would have been executed immediately. After the war, Penraat became an industrial designer in Amsterdam, then in 1958, moved to the United States, where he continued in industrial design. When interviewed by the Pittsbergh Post-Gazette why he helped the Jews in Holland when so many of his countrymen did not, he replied that it had seemed necessary. "You do these things because in your mind, there is no other way of doing it." In June 1998, Penraat was honored with the Israeli Medal of the Righteous Among Nations by Yad Vashem, for his efforts to save Dutch Jews. His story is chronicalled in the book, "Forging Freedom" by Hudson Talbott. Penraat died in his home in Catskill, NY, from esophageal cancer at the age of 88. (Bio by Kit and Morgan Benson) Bio by: Kit and Morgan Benson

Jaap was born in 1918. He's the son of Gerrit Theodorus Penraat and Maria Leenslag.

He married Eleonore Dekker in 1940.

He married Ottolina Henriette Gerarde Jongejans in 1950.

Sources

1. ↑ Jaap Penraat (1918-2006) on Find A Grave: Memorial #14798966 retrieved 01 August 2020

• Amsterdam Stadsarchief Archiefkaarten, archiefnummer 30238, inventarisnummer 627