During WWII, the name “Euterpe Straat” (pronounced like /Uy-tar-pa Straaht/) was synonymous with torture and extreme fear. After having been a girls’ school, the notorious SD had its headquarters there. Many Resistance fighters as well as betrayed Jews (like Truus Wijsmuller and Anne Frank respectively) were taken here for interrogation and often torture. After the war, the name of the street as well as the school were changed to “Gerrit van der Veen,” a Dutch sculptor who was involved with the “Free Artists” Resistance group that Kairos’ fiancée, Anne-Sophie was a member of.

Officially called Prison II, this prison was where many Resistance members ended up. Truus Wijsmuller was thrown into Mien Sneevliet’s cell.

Although Mien Sneevliet was the wife of a prominent communist politician whom Truus Wijsmuller most likely did not like, the women respected each other because of their work to help “common” women get better rights. They also discovered that Mien had lived on the Nassau Quay where Truus still lived. Mien Sneevliet, like Mies Boissevain and Dédée de Jongh, would later survive Ravensbrück. Mrs. Wijsmuller was lucky and was set free again. She used her second lease on life to go into what she called “the food business.”

In mid-1941, Jacoba van Tongeren started Resistance “Group 2000.” The group of about 150 people was specialized in helping those who had to hide, like Jews, Resistance fighters, and young men avoiding forced Nazi labor. No addresses or names were used, but instead Van Tongeren invented a code system. Because the members only knew each other by their code number, the group had far fewer casualties than other Resistance groups. No one knew that Jacoba van Tongeren was the leader until after her death when her nephew found her memoires and had it published in 2015. See: https://jacobavantongeren.nl/

One famous member was # 2200, sculptor Gerrit van der Veen who worked together with CS-6 and would be executed for his part in the attack on the Amsterdam civil registry in March of 1943. Another famous member was #203, the half-Jewish, lesbian orchestra conductor Frieda Belinfante. She was the first woman to conduct a professional chamber orchestra in Amsterdam in the 1930s. Later, she would move to California to start the Orange County Philharmonic. #2200 and #203 forged ID cards, which #2000 and other couriers would deliver. Leader Jacoba van Tongeren aka #2000 had devised a special vest in which she could hide 5000 food stamps.

Soon after having been locked up in Prison II, Truus Wijsmuller became #23030 and went into what she called the “food business,” providing those in hiding or in the camps with food or food stamps.

An American newspaper reports that the Dutch are scared that if the Allies were to invade Europe, the Nazis would break the dykes and inundate Holland. Less than two months later, the D-Day invasion was a fact, but indeed later that winter parts of the country were inundated. When the Nazis also cut off all food supplies, the result was the infamous Amsterdam “Hunger Winter.” That’s when #23030 aka Truus Wijsmuller had Amsterdam children secretly taken across the lake to an area where food was still available. Mrs. Wijsmuller was such a sly fox; since she could not get the food to the children, she found a way to smuggle the children to the food.