Photo
Frieda Belinfante
“For three months I was disguised as a man, and very successfully… I passed my mother several times … she never recognized me.”
Frieda Belinfante, a half-Jewish lesbian, used this disguise to hide from Nazi authorities. In a later interview she said, “I really looked pretty good.”
Her involvement in the resistance movement included planning the destruction of the Amsterdam Population Registry in March 1943, falsifying identity cards, and arranging hiding places for those who were sought by the Nazis.
She was driven to hide herself, after many other members of the Netherlands-based gay resistance group were executed in 1943 by occupying Nazi authorities. In December 1943, Frieda escaped to Switzerland and later immigrated to the United States.
Frieda’s contribution showed the scope of complexity and diversity of the resistance movement to aid others that many faced during the era of the Holocaust.
Tags
- US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Toni Boumans