In this Big Interview, Fourthline's COO, Fleur de Roos interviews Anna Boogaard, author of De Kriterionmeisjes (The Kriterion Girls) 

In her newly published book De Kriterionmeisjes, historian Anna Boogaard delves into the remarkable, long overlooked stories of twelve University of Amsterdam students who were active in the Dutch Resistance during World War II. With acts equally courageous and deceptive, the students moved in quiet defiance, forging identities to help countless Jewish people evade deportation to the concentration camps. After the war, the women went on to create a different cultural legacy in helping to found the iconic Amsterdam student cinema, Kriterion. 

Among them was Jenneke de Roos-Wijzenbeek, grandmother of Fleur de Roos. De Roos sat down with the book’s author to discuss the lesser-known history of a woman she knew and loved and to explore how identity, once a tool of survival, continues to shape life today with the power to protect and also deceive.  

Q: Why did you want to write this book? What inspired you to write it? 

The greatest motivation to write this book was the inspiring women that I discovered during my research. My book started as a master’s thesis, which soon got out of hand due to the many amazing women that I found out were part of the Resistance, and who had rarely been written about before. As soon as I came across their stories I knew I had to write them down. I owed it to them, to share the stories and their experiences now that someone had finally uncovered them.  

Q: What was the most interesting and unexpected thing you discovered while writing it? 

I always had an image of the Resistance in my mind that was heroic, and because of that it seemed like something positive, also for the members of the Resistance. During my research however, I learned how much pain, loss, and tragedy the members had to endure to do their respective jobs. I was amazed by the resilience and strength these people had to gather so that they could go on, even though they had lost so many loved ones. It’s incredible and, for me, their heroism is reflected not only in the choice to resist, but that they were able to go on despite the terrible circumstances of what was happening.  

Q: Can you give an example that demonstrates  in what way the behaviour and decision making of these women was different from the men that were active against the Germans in WWII? 

The main difference between the behaviour of the women and men in the Resistance had to do with the way the tasks were divided in the group. Women had distinct roles in society. For example, their job was to look after the children, and they used this situation in their work for the Resistance. The women’s roles would allow them to travel undetected with Jewish children and even, babies, from Amsterdam and in that way, it was possible to save these children by bringing them to certain hiding places in the countryside.   

Q: The women in the book are mainly university students. How did these students learn the skills required for forging official documents?   

In my book I describe the story of Marjolein Heijermans, a law student who was also highly creative. She learned how to forge documents from one of the men in the group, who probably learned it from Gerrit Jan van der Veen, one of the artists who had started forging documents during the war. Marjolein became particularly good at it and for at least two years she forged 10 to 15 documents a day. Can you imagine? She must have made thousands of documents that saved Jewish lives!  

Q: Were there small handwritten details or visual cues that the forgers obsessed over to make a document convincing enough to survive a German inspection? 

Yes, there were so many details! Not only did they need the official paper (which they often stole from the warehouses where the papers were kept) and the official stamps, but they also needed to consider the made up places people were born (often abroad, because that would be safer), their age, parents, etc.  

And it was especially important to have all the dates right for when people were ‘married’, and they had to check old calendars to see if the false date wasn’t on a Sunday (when you couldn’t get married).   

Most importantly, in the Netherlands the Jews had a large ‘J’ printed in their passport so the Nazi’s would know immediately who was or wasn’t Jewish by taking a quick look at their papers. On a forged document the ‘J’ was removed, which of course made it much safer for traveling. 

Q: The students you wrote about used false identities to protect people, while I work in a technology space that is focused on stopping criminals who use fake identities to exploit the financial system. How do you think these women would make sense of identity manipulation being used for completely opposite purposes across our two generations, also considering the geopolitical reality we live in today? 

This is a difficult question to answer since our reality has changed so much since then. However, I think many would warn us about the potential negative consequences of keeping track of everything and everyone. Keeping everyone’s data is something they would probably be cautious about since it could easily fall into the wrong hands, as we saw with WWII.  

Q: Helping others assume new identities must have been emotionally complicated. Were there stories you came across from the women that evidenced any internal struggle? 

The women mainly tried to hide their fears during the war. There simply wasn’t room to deal with them, they had so much to do and so many responsibilities. Giving in to fear would break you down and so many of them tried to avoid that. Only later, after the war, they realised the emotional impact of their work.  

Q: Were there times when the women had to decide who they could help and who they couldn’t? In my job, we prioritise cases based on risk, but their decisions carried much heavier, life-or-death consequences. How did they seem to handle that burden? 

Ah, this is an interesting question, since I think risk evaluation played a major part in their decision making. Take, for example, the fact that the women tried to save as many Jewish children as they could out of a daycare where the children waited to be transported to the concentration camps.

There was an instance I came across where there was this one baby they wanted to save, but they couldn’t. They described not only how they thought the boy was adorable, but also that the German SS-Guards had seen him and thought so, too. Having the baby disappear by bringing him to a safe address was impossible since the Germans knew who he was and so the women had to let the baby go. They found out that he was eventually killed in Sobibor, at only nine months old. Even though the Resistance wanted to save him, they couldn’t do it because it would have put their entire operation at risk.  

Q: Do you think people today understand how much skill and courage went into producing a document that could stand up to Nazi scrutiny?  

No, I don’t think people realise how dangerous forging documents was and how vital they were for the work in the Resistance. The right papers kept you safe when you were checked by the Nazi’s, but if discovered, you, the forger, could end up in jail or worse.  

Q: After everything you researched for this book, what advice would you give about handling other people’s identities? 

My research showed me how careful we need to be with our data. Forging documents during the Second World War saved lives, but today it could destroy them. We live in a completely different world in which we need to think critically about who can access our data, and how much data we want to collect.

The women in my book had to promise not to forge documents after the war. It was illegal, of course, and if used for the wrong motives it could jeopardise the entire system. Let’s hope we won’t be needing fake identities to keep us safe ever again.