Jews in Holland Challenge Archbishop on Girl’s Abduction

The boards of the Dutch Ashkenazi and Sephardic communities of Holland today took issue with a statement by Archbishop Alfrink, ranking Catholic official in this country, advising the Jews to call off their search for Anneke Beekman, Jewish girl who has been spirited away by her Catholic fostermother, and to renounce its claims to the child.

The Archbishop, responding to an earlier appeal by the Jewish community, issued a statement in which he advised the Jews to give up the campaign to find the child, who was placed in the care of a Catholic woman during the Nazi occupation to keep her out of the hands of the Germans. He also said that the community should not ask the Catholic woman, who baptized the child seven years ago, to surrender her against the child’s free will.

The Jews today challenged the Archbishop’s use of the phrase “free will” of Anneke Beekman who, it was charged, had been baptized seven years ago and then hidden from the Jewish community with the collaboration of Catholic institutions. The Jewish community also noted that a Dutch court had stated that it was not in the interests of the child to remain in a Catholic foster home.

Meanwhile, Dutch police have arrested Mrs. Elizabeth Langendyk Van Moorst, one of the two Catholic women who acted as foster mothers of the Beekman child and her former guardian. Questioned in her home at Silversum by detectives, Mrs. Van Moorst denied all knowledge of the girl’s whereabouts or those of Mrs. Van Moorst’s sister, who spirited the child away from a Belgian school just as the authorities were coming for Anneke.