Muller Pauline (Waasdijk van)

Wolterbeek Muller, Pauline (van Waasdijk) Working from a beauty parlor in Amsterdam, Pauline van Waasdijk (later Wolterbeek Muller) saved 91 children, assisted by her colleague Hester van Lennep (later Baracs*). The two Resistance workers regularly visited areas of the city where raids were imminent and took Jewish children from their desperate parents, promising that they would find them foster homes. Women also came to the beauty parlor with their children and would leave them with Pauline after a treatment. A list of the fugitive children was kept so that they could be returned to any surviving parents. On June 26, 1943, three-week-old Ruth Michaelis was brought to Pauline and Hester, but the family that promised to take her refused to give their word that they would not adopt her. Pauline and Hester therefore tossed a coin for Ruth and Pauline became the lucky single mother of the baby girl. Friends celebrated the “birth” and a physician was found to sign the birth certificate. Hester registered the baby as Marijke van Waasdijk (father unknown) and she collected the infant’s ration cards. Some of Pauline’s customers refused to continue treatment with her because she was an unmarried mother. When the apartment was raided, Pauline and Hester left Amsterdam to live with their respective parents until the end of the war. Marijke, whose parents and brother died in Sobibor, left Holland at the age of four to be raised by her uncle in New York. Pauline married and had two children and died in 1976, never having seen her foster child again. On September 8, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized Pauline Wolterbeek Muller-van Waasdijk as Righteous Among the Nations.