Actor Stephen Fry Shares True Story of Dutch Artist, Cellist Who Forged Identity Cards for Thousands of Jews During WWII

As part of a documentary that aired last week on Britain’s Channel 4, Jewish British actor and comedian Stephen Fry traveled to Amsterdam to share the little-known true story of two members of the Dutch Resistance who forged identity cards that saved thousands of Jews in The Netherlands from being deported to Nazi concentration camps during World War II.

Willem Arondeus, a painter, and Frieda Belinfante, a conductor and cellist, created the fake identity cards. Arondeous, together with a group of other artists, also led a raid to bomb the Central Records Office, where Nazis stored some duplicates of cards they issued, and Belinfante found a way to raise money needed for the paper used to create the forgeries.

Wealthy businessman Henry Heineken, who started the Heineken brewery, was on the board of the Dutch orchestra Concertgebouw, which Belinfante had played for. He wanted to help her but huge bank withdrawals would have been suspicious to the Nazis, who seized control of the Heineken brewery’s profits. Belinfante instead concocted the idea of having Heineken buy her cello and pay a large sum, which would then be used for the identity cards.

Fry said the war gave Arondeus and Belinfant a chance to stand united against Nazi injustice.

“It was a mixture of being able to fight for what they believed in, for the freedom of the oppressed and the Jews in particular, but also a way to belong, as they were both gay,” Fry explained. “Willem had been thrown out by his family when he came out aged 17, and he left his lover because he didn’t want to involve him in the danger that he was embarking on, so he got himself a family, and gay people have always looked for a family.”

Fry added that he had never heard of Arondeus and Belinfante and neither had many Dutch people. He said, “We think of The Netherlands as this wonderfully tolerant, accepting country with all kinds of progressive ideas, but you could say that Willem and Frieda weren’t celebrated until recently because they were gay.”

“If I weren’t gay and I weren’t Jewish, would I have the same deep sense of wanting to oppose injustice, the same sense of being apart from the main run of humanity?” he asked. “It’s impossible to answer, because your whole identity is bound up in so many different things, but one’s minority status does open up a questioning and inspection of the world.

“I’d love to meet Willem and Frieda and tell them a bit about the present day, that I’m a man who married another man, and that The Netherlands was the first country to allow that. I’d tell them that their little part in that journey towards a more accepting and better world has now been noted.”

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