Three women who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust were honored and each was presented with the Medal of the Just at the Israeli Consulate here. The three women, Mrs. Lydia Van Zwol-Nardlund of Jackson Heights, N.Y., Mrs. Germaine Belinne of New Jersey and Mrs. Josefa Oken-Polanska of Poland who recently arrived in the U.S., were presented with the Medal by Israel’s Consul General in New York, Uri Ben Ari, who cited the “bravery and human kindness they showed” to Jews during the Holocaust.
Mrs. Belinne and her family helped 35 Jews during the Nazi occupation of Belgium, by feeding them and supplying them with forged papers. As a 15-year-old girl, Mrs. Nardlund helped hide 450 Jews in her native Pelp, Holland. Mrs. Polanska, who was also 15 at the time, hid a Jewish family for a year-and-a-half in the small Polish town of Rodnik, where no Jews lived. The three women were recommended for the award by the Commission for Designation of the Just of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
