Henk Zanoli

Henk Zanoli (21 April 1923) is a retired lawyer and former member of the Dutch resistance during World War II, who was awarded the honorific title Righteous Among the Nations, but returned his medal after an Israeli air strike killed six of his family members.[1]

Zanoli was born in Laren in 1923. During the war, the Zanoli family were involved in the resistance. In 1943, when Zanoli's father had already been arrested by the German occupiers,[2] Zanoli himself smuggled the young Jewish boy Elhanan Pinto from Amsterdam to Eemnes. With his mother Jans, Zanoli kept Pinto in hiding for the rest of the war. While the rest of Pinto's family were killed in the Holocaust,[3] he survived to reach age 72 before dying in Jerusalem in 2007.[2] The resistance work cost Zanoli's father and brother-in-law their lives, while his Jewish sister-in-law was deported and never returned.[4]

In 1950, the State of Israel awarded Zanoli with the Righteous Among the Nations medal.[5][6][7] In 2014, at age 91, Zanoli returned the medal to Israel after an Israeli air strike killed six family members who were living in Gaza; these people were in-laws of his grandniece, a diplomat, who is married to a Palestinian economist.[4]

References

  1. ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/16/world/middleeast/henk-zanoli-israel-gaza-holocaust-ziadah.html?_r=0
  2. 1 2 Hartman, Ben (18 August 2014). "Niece of Man Saved by Dutchman who Returned Yad Vashem Medal: 'I Disagree With Him But I Love Him'". Tablet Magazine.
  3. ↑ http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28814555
  4. 1 2 http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/middle-east/dutchman-returns-holocaust-medal-in-protest-over-gaza-1.1899472
  5. ↑ Henk Zanoli at Yad Vashem website
  6. ↑ http://www.nltimes.nl/2014/08/15/man-helped-jewish-kid-wwii-returns-medal-israel-gaza-bombing/
  7. ↑ http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2024321783_holocaustheroxml.html
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