07 Aug Den Haag, Jewish Orphanage “Ezer Jatom” (Help for Orphans)
De Sumatra Post, April 28, 1932, page 12
Photo by Miriam Keesing, November 2009
Address: Pletterijstraat 66, The Hague
This orphanage existed since 1849. In 1932 it moved to the building in the Pletterijstraat. It could accommodate 42 children between five and eighteen years of age. The boys stayed on the first floor, the girls on the second. (27)
Starting in 1933 the orphanage started taking in German refugee children. The idea was to let these children emigrate to Palestine, as the leaders were Zionists. Like the other orphanages, this one took in three children from the Waisenhaus in Frankfurt am Main on November 22nd, 1938. More refugee children followed on April 13th, 1939: about 13 of them. Because of this, the orphanage housed more children than it could officially handle: between the middle of 1940 and the middle of 1941 there were 68 children in the home.
On March 5, 1943 around 9 ‘o clock at night, all the children who were still in the orphanage were deported, first to Westerbork and from there most of them went to Sobibor. Among them were 12 refugee children. Director Heinrich Ullmann, his wife and children went with the children to Sobibor.
The building still exists and houses students now.
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27. Daniël Metz: Een historisch overzicht van acht joodse weeshuizen in Nederland, Misjpoge 2005-2, 58