Left to right: Fran Sonshine, Hannah Steynen, Galit Baram. (Supplied by Israeli Consulate in Toronto)

By David Opinko

Lethbridge family honoured for protecting Jewish refugees during Holocaust

Sep 27, 2019 | 3:12 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – Hannah Steynen was invited to the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem, Israel this week to receive a prestigious award from the Consul General Galit Baram.

She accepted the award on behalf of her late parents Bart Rijpstra and Wytske Keverkamp.

The couple has been designated as being “Righteous Among the Nations”.

During the World War Two era, Rijpstra and Keverkamp lived in the small town of Zaandijk, 11 km northwest of Amsterdam, Netherlands.

They were part of a small group of teachers who helped to protect and hide Jewish refugees seeking to escape from the Nazi regime.

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The pair worked tirelessly to keep 17 Jewish people from harm, all of whom went on to live long lives after the war ended.

Steynen was just a child at the time and was not told by her parents that these people were refugees. From what she was told, she believed that they were her aunts and uncles.

“She would not know until years later that her parents were part of a heroic life-saving network at this dark time in human history,” reads a backgrounder provided by the Israeli consulate.

One of her vivid memories as a small child was seeing the door of her home kicked open by the Nazis during a raid.

Following the second world war, Rijpstra received a certificate signed by then-United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower to thank the couple for their efforts.

Steynen and her family moved to Canada in 1968 and spend the majority of the time since then living in Lethbridge, but also moved to Calgary and Duncan, B.C. for work.

Her parents passed away in the mid and late 1980s.

Left to right: Bart Rijpstra, Hannah Steynen, Wytske Keverkamp in August 1945. (Supplied by Israeli Consulate in Toronto)