Leida was released and received a work permit in France. Because she spoke good French, she ended up with the Van der Post family. That family sheltered several Jewish people. Leida could also go to his remote farm. There she works as an au pair for the children Freddy and Jaqueline van der Post. Van der Oord visited them in France. “I myself followed in the footsteps of Leida and Salomon and traveled the route to France. So I also spoke to the children that Leida looked after.”
Freddy van der Post, 6 years old at the time, could handle it Madame Leia still remember well. “She was like a second mother to me. She always walked me to school and also picked me up. When I called her, she came. In my later life she inspired me, especially with the self-confidence and love that she gave me,” says the now 84-year-old Van der Post.
He has lived in Canada for sixty years and came to the Netherlands especially for the book presentation. He is proud to be part of Leida’s story.
So Leida survived the war. But when she returns to the Netherlands, her entire family appears to have been murdered. The same goes for Ido Wolf’s family. Together they flee in a marriage of convenience and live for a short time in the parental home of the Wolf family on the Prins Hendrikstraat in Assen. All their children were born there. Now there are stumbling stones in front of the house.
Because the Wolf family’s house on Prins Hendrikstraat also has a history. In 1942 the family was taken out of the house by the German occupiers. Later, Camp Westerbork commander Albert Gemmeker lived in the house for four months.
According to Van der Oord, it is important to also tell this Holocaust story. “Something like this should never happen again. As far as I’m concerned, these stories can’t be told often enough.”