Johan van Hulst: Dutch teacher credited with saving 600 Jewish children and babies from Nazis dies, aged 107

Teaching academy lecturer is recognised as 'righteous among the nations' by Israel

Former Dutch politician Johan van Hulst in the Hague, the Netherlands, on 20 November 2012 (EPA)

A Dutch teacher credited with saving some 600 Jewish children from the Nazis during the Second World War has died, aged 107.

While working at a teaching academy in Amsterdam Johan van Hulst used its proximity to a nursery to smuggle babies and children out of the city, under the noses of German troops.

When occupying forces took over the nursery and a theatre near his academy to use as deportation centres, Van Hulst and members of the Dutch resistance trusted by the Nazis to run the system conspired to falsify its records.

By recording that a certain number of children had been brought in, rather than the true figure, some could be spirited away and later taken to safety before the Germans could transport them to concentration camps.

But the act of saving those few, Van Hulst later admitted, was heartwrenching. “Everyone understood that if 30 children were brought, we could not save 30 children,” he said last year. “We had to make a choice anyway, and one of the most horrible things was to make a choice.”

The Dutch senate – where Van Hulst was a member for a quarter of a century from 1956 – announced his death this week.

Along with Walter Suskind, who ran the deportation centre, and Henriette Pimentel, the head of the creche, and others he helped save several hundred children from almost certain death.

The trio is said to have used passing trams as cover in order to hide their activities from German guards.

In 1972 Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust remembrance centre recognised Van Hulst as “righteous among the nations”, an honour granted to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

According to the centre, when the Germans decided to clear out the nursery in 1943, Van Hulst was presented by its principal with scores of its children and asked to shelter some if he could.

It quoted him as saying later: “Try to imagine 80, 90, perhaps 70 or 100 children standing there, and you have to decide which children to take with you. That was the most difficult day of my life.

“You realise that you cannot possibly take all the children with you. You know for a fact that the children you leave behind are going to die. I took 12 with me. Later on I asked myself, ‘Why not 13?’”

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu honoured Van Hulst during a visit to the Netherlands in 2012. He said: “We say, those who save one life saves a universe. You saved hundreds of universes.”

Johan van Hulst died on 22 March 2018.