Mrs. Gertrude van Moorst, the wartime fostermother of the Dutch Jewish orphan, Anneke Beekman, whom she has refused to surrender to the Jewish community as ordered by the Dutch courts, will appear before a special court in Liege to fight extradition to Holland.
Mrs. van Moorst escaped from Holland after she had been sentenced, in absentia, to a prison term for her role in kidnaping and spiriting away the Jewish child so that she would be reared as a Catholic. The woman was found and arrested in a small Belgian town last month. The child is still missing.
Considerable press attention has been focused on the case since the woman’s arrest and the Belgian Catholic papers make no attempt to hide their sympathy for the van Moorst family. The court proceedings will be closed to the public.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.