Narration is in bold. 

Nahanni: Hello Can We Talk? listeners, Nahanni Rous here. 

In honor of Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, I’m sharing a podcast episode from Making Gay History’s current series about the Nazi era, which I'm proud to co-produce with Inge De Taeye and Eric Marcus. 

Frieda Belinfante was a Dutch musician and underground activist who risked her life to help save hundreds of Jews from the Nazis. She’s one of several LGBTQ people whose testimonies are featured in this Making Gay History series. I hope you enjoy the episode and that you’ll check out the rest of the series at makinggayhistory.org.

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Frieda Belinfante: I feel very lonesome if there's nobody around that I can help and love and protect. And I don't understand people that can only live for themselves. I can't understand it. Where do you get your happiness? Where do you get your satisfaction? What do you do with your life? What do you do with your strength? There must be somebody that needs help—always is. I've always had people—whether they were worth it or not comes out later. They haven't all been worth my effort, but then the effort was worth, was the effort. That's the way I look at life.

Eric Marcus: I’m Eric Marcus and this is Making Gay History: The Nazi Era.

Frieda Belinfante was born in Amsterdam in 1904 to a Sephardic Jewish father and a Christian mother. She was the third of four children and grew up in a secular household. Her father was a renowned concert pianist who encouraged his children to play music. Frieda trained as a cellist and made her professional debut at 17. 

When she was 90 years old, Frieda sat down for a seven and a half hour interview for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum at her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The interviewer was Dr. Klaus Müller. Frieda tells him about Henriëtte Bosmans—or Jettie—a pianist and composer she met as a teenager.

Frieda: My best friend, girlfriend, was the composer Jettie Bosmans. I was a high admirer of this wonderful, beautiful-looking girl composer. I met her when she, when she was in her early 20s and I was only 16. And I loved her for a long time—many, many years. That was really my first real love. The first one I really said in my life to, “I'm here because I love you.” 

Uh, she was a very talented and very attractive person in the beginning. But she was not a giving person. She was a person who took more than she gave, which was fine with me because I had an abundance of devotion to give.

Klaus Müller: Did you live together? 

Frieda: Yes, and she had several men friends. People fell in love with her because of her talent and her looks. And Jettie had her flings with artist friends, love affairs with men, while we lived together. It was all fine with me. I mean, it was not particularly a sexual bond. It was more my protection of this person, which I love very much.

Klaus: Did you ever work together? 

Frieda: She wrote a cello concerto and, and, and dedicated it to, to me, and I played that in Utrecht and I played it in other places, but she dedicated it to me, because we became very fast friends.

Klaus: You lived together for seven years, and, and then you— 

Frieda: Uh, actually, yeah, we met, uh, we, we met Feltkamp, who became my husband. He was a wonderful flute player, the best I ever heard in my life. Uh, and, uh, he was the one who put me a little bit more on my own feet. He said, uh, “You're, you’re a musician yourself.” And he was starting to boost my ego a little bit about my music. 

But he would pick me up to carry my cello home and, and so forth, and I got very, very close to him as a friend. But he made up his mind he couldn't live without me, and he, and he wanted to marry me, and I said, "I'm not the marrying type really." And one time he came in with a revolver and put it on the mantle, and I said, "What are you trying to do?" And he said, "I, I don't want to live without you." And I said, "Well, I told you I'm not really the marrying kind. I don't think I can ever love a man like I can love a woman. I always put the women on the pedestal, not the men. I don't know why, but that's my nature.” 

“Well,” he said, “I still want to live where you live.” And I said, "Well, if that's your choice and otherwise you're going to shoot yourself, I think you better live." So we married and we had a very good relationship, especially musically, but I was never as carried away and as romantic as I can be the other way. 

As soon as we were married, he was changed. He had been very happy, very playful, very, uh, outgoing. When we were married, he got less and less, less and less happy. And I said, "Do you want a divorce?" He said, "Yes." I moved out.

Eric: Frieda’s five-year marriage to Jo Feltkamp ended in 1936. By then, she’d become a conductor and soon led her own professional chamber orchestra. But her success as the first female conductor in the Netherlands was short-lived. 

In May 1940 the Nazis invaded. They established a Dutch Kulturkammer modeled after the Reich’s Chamber of Culture. Any artists who wanted to work had to join and submit to the Nazis’ ideological demands. Tens of thousands of artists capitulated. Only so-called Aryans were allowed membership, and art that the Nazis considered degenerate was banned. 

Frieda: The moment the Germans got into the country, I said to the orchestra, "Boys, there is no orchestra. We have never existed." 

I completely disappeared from the musical life and immediately started to prepare myself to do other things that needed doing. I tried to feel my way with everybody, and who I could trust and who I couldn't trust, and just continued teaching when that was possible. But I completely withdrew from the public life. 

Eric: Frieda joined a resistance group of like-minded artists, including Willem Sandberg. They encouraged other artists to resist and supported those whose resistance cost them their livelihood. 

Frieda: And I was asked then by Sandberg during that period would I represent the musicians, be the head of the, of the group that would take care of the musicians, because if they couldn’t work… There were many people that had to continue working to make a living, and if they couldn't work and do what the Germans told them to do, then they couldn't make a living. The, the people who did not join the Kulturkammer didn't get any work, so they became immediately, uh, in need of support.

And so they had established funds to support artists. I mean, it was mostly artists of all, all types—architects, painters, writers—so anybody who needed money would get help from that group. That was during the years '40, '41, '42. 

I had contact with Sandberg, and one time he asked me, uh, he said, “We are very short of money. Can you, do you have any, any source that you can help us with money?” And I said, "Well, I have some people that I know are very wealthy," and one was Mr. Heineken. I didn't know him well, but I knew he was a music lover and I had, I had an instinctive feeling that he was on the right side. Anyway, I went to see Mr. Heineken and asked him, could he help us financially. And he said, "How come you trust me? How do you know that I'm on your side?" I said, "Well, I go by faces. That's all I have to go by. I don't know." He said, “You're right.” He said, "But you know, I have a problem, because I have my office riddled with Germans looking over my shoulder, breathing down my neck, want to know where everything, where the money comes from that is spent." He said, "I'm not my own boss anymore." He said, “It's very difficult to do, unless,” he said, "do you have an idea?" I said, "Maybe I do." He said, "You do?" I said, "Yes, I have an idea. Buy my cello. They're pretty costly, you know, and I have no way to use it. I can't play now.” He said, "That's a wonderful idea." And he did. So I brought my cello, and he gave me the money.

Then in '43 it became much more serious. During, during those years, I had prepared myself to do something different. I had prepared myself to get IDs as soon as they came out. IDs without the “J” on it. I mean, I would say to Jewish people, I can make you one without a “J.” I was very good at falsifying things. 

Steady hand to take the glossy part, because the picture had—when this is the picture, the other side was a seal, under which was the fingerprint. And so you had to get, keep the fingerprint. So I had to take the glossy part off without injuring the back side, the seal, which I was good at. And then the picture had no stamps on it, and I had to falsify that with two different colors of ink sometimes. So you had to have a steady hand for that. That was, that was my main occupation. That was very tedious work. It took a lot of time.

Eric: And time was running out. Every week, more than a thousand Dutch Jews were being deported to death camps in Poland. Sandberg recruited a young printer, and the group started mass producing fake IDs.

But Frieda soon saw a problem: the central population registry in Amsterdam had a duplicate copy of every citizen’s ID. If someone was stopped with a freshly printed ID card that didn’t have a corresponding copy at the registry, their whole operation could be exposed. By then, thousands of Jews were carrying fake IDs. The group hatched a daring plan to bomb the registry.

Klaus: Who had the idea? 

Frieda: I think I did. 

Klaus: Yeah. 

Frieda: And if I remember well, I said, "This is getting too dangerous. We have to start immediately because everybody is carrying false cards." I was carrying false cards myself.

I knew it was guarded. We all knew that. I mean, they were expecting all kinds of things from the Dutch, from the resistance. This office was protected, and we found out more and more that it was terribly protected.

We had to find how to get a leak in the personnel that could tell us exactly where the cards’ duplicates were held. We had to have a tailor who would make two policemen uniforms. We had to find some leak in the police force that would tell us whether the officers were known by all the policemen, yes or no, and so forth. We had a lot of preparations to do, which, which went on for months.

I only got the part in the preparations, because they didn't want women in the attack on City Hall. We never got an active part in that.

Klaus: Why? 

Frieda: I think because the, the main attackers were policemen. And to be disguised as a policeman for a man is easier. So I think they had a valid reason. However, there could have been—a woman could have brought in some of the explosives or some of the things that were not too heavy to carry. They had principally said, no women. There was no question about that.

Klaus: But was there any discussion? 

Frieda: No. I don't think so. The women have played a part. But none of the women was asked to do anything that night that they had the attack take place. That was a man's job. I, I would have liked to be part of it, but, uh…

Klaus: Who was leading the attack? Who was the leader of the attack? 

Frieda: The leader of the attack actually was, was Arondéus. Arondéus was very quiet about what he did, very, very modest about what he did. But he got his satisfaction to show what a gay man could do.

Klaus: Can you tell us who Willem Arondéus is with whom you worked together? 

Frieda: Uh, well, yes. He was called Ticky. We all called him Ticky. And, uh, he was, uh, a gay man and, uh, very obvious. I mean, everybody knew it who knew him. He was very shy, very shy and had kind of an inferiority complex. He felt inferior about his, his being a gay man, and I have never felt that way. I have never been apologetic about what I am. But I could never get him to feel any different because he had felt that way all his life—very apologetic and, and, uh, not accepted.

But gradually I learned what was really this man and his value and, uh, we worked as a team. In that group we became very close. And one time we had a conversation about the danger that was over our head, and I, I said or he said, uh, "Do you think that we see the end of this war?" And I said, "I don't think so." He said, "I don't either." And, um, he said, "Do you mind?" And I said, "No, I don't." He said, "I don't either." 

I might have added, uh, “Well, I'd rather give my life for something than give it for nothing. When I get a bump on my head I die, too, and I have not done anything with my life. I want a high price for mine.” He says, "I think the same way." 

I remember I was, I was on the roof. It was going to be done at night, and, and, and as soon as it was dark. I think it was on a Saturday, and I was on the roof to see whether I could hear something.

Klaus: Was the attack successful? 

Frieda: Very successful. They did successfully blow the thing up. And of course, everything went according to schedule. It went off without any problem. 

Klaus: What happened after the attack of the population register? 

Frieda: It, it got destroyed. It what, was very much of a, um, of a loss for the German occupation, very much. They were very upset about it, and that's why they were determined to kill those people. 

Klaus: Were the group betrayed or how, how were people caught from the group? 

Frieda: There were so many people involved and that is one of the reasons that the traitors got in. There were too many people involved. The tailor was caught. And a professor who knew the tailor was caught.

Arondéus was picked up as number one. His attitude was absolutely heroic. When he was arrested, they came in and they say, "In the name of Hitler, we arrest you, you follow us," or something. And he said, "And in the name of the Queen of Holland, I will follow you." I mean, he was not even startled, and he was a support for all other people that were arrested. He was a moral support. He was absolutely what he planned to be.

He was very satisfied that he would give his life for that. He would prove that you didn't have to be a heterosexual person to be heroic or to, to make an offer of your life. 

Klaus: How many people were arrested from the group? 

Frieda: Twelve. There were more people arrested, but the women were not killed. But there were very few people that were not caught.

Klaus: And, and what happened to these people who were arrested? 

Frieda: They were kept in jail until the execution.

Eric: The March 1943 attack on the population registry was only partially successful; just 15 percent of the records were destroyed. Days later, Rudi Bloemgarten, Frieda’s friend and resistance liaison, missed their weekly meeting. She realized their cell had been betrayed.

After a Nazi show trial, twelve people involved in the attack were executed by firing squad. Among them were Rudi Bloemgarten; the tailor Sjoerd Bakker, a gay man whose last request was to die in a pink shirt; and Willem Arondéus. Shortly before Arondéus was killed, his lawyer paid him a final visit. He urged her: “Tell people that homosexuals are not cowards.” 

Meanwhile, Frieda continued to help out-of-work artists and Jews trying to evade deportation even as she hid from the Gestapo. 

Frieda: For three months I was disguised as a man. A friend of mine had the same figure, the same height, and I had a three-piece suit that fit me to a tee. Except this, what I have here, had to be matched down here and filled. So I was a little heavier-set little man. And I had to buy a hat, the smallest hat that I ever found, and it still had to have a band in it to fit my little head. 

I went out for the first time in my disguise and I went to get a haircut right away. I went into the barber shop and I took my hat off and put it on the hook, and the barber walks up to me and he said, "What do you want, Sir, shave or a haircut?" And I said, "No, just haircut." And he didn't, he didn’t bat an eye. I had a cold and it helped a lot to get my voice a little down. And I talked like, talked like that all the time, and I stayed, and I got used to that pretty soon. 

And I was, for three months I was disguised as a man and very successfully so, because I lived at the Jacob Obrechtstraat number 64 and my mother lived at 44, and I passed my mother several times during that time, and, uh, she never recognized me. Nobody did. I was a very naturally-looking young guy. 

Anyway, uh, I stayed in different places and more and more had the feeling I have to get out before I jeopardize other people that give me shelter. Every single time I had been somewhere, the people would tell me that the Gestapo, some people from the Gestapo came and asked, was I there. So they were on my trail. 

I mean it got very difficult. That was the end of '43. And the raids were worse—the nights that they took a block and circled it to find people and counted the, the beds that had been unmade. I knew I would be caught pretty soon and maybe be cause of somebody being killed along with me. So, I decided I had to leave. 

Eric: Frieda’s underground contacts arranged a perilous escape that took her from the Netherlands through Belgium and into France. Her two-month journey ended with a 12-hour trek through waist-high snow to cross the French border into neutral Switzerland in February 1944. She ended up in a refugee camp located in an old hilltop hotel, alongside 160 other Dutch refugees.

Frieda: I had gotten a cello—while I was in the camp, I had gotten a cello. Somebody rented it for me, so that I could play again, and I played a concert there with a, a visiting couple that played violin and viola. And so we played a Dvorak trio as a concert, and I started come, to come alive again, because I had felt I wasn't even alive. I felt like I would never care about music anymore—which lasted about a couple of months. I felt dead inside. I thought I’d never make music anymore. 

And then suddenly, I came kind of to myself. I started a choir and made people sing. And then finally, I got a little bored with the camp life. I was getting tired of these 160 people who didn't do anything, and they were starting to gossip about me and about my being a lesbian. And I got a little tired of being in that camp.

Klaus: When did you go back to Amsterdam after the war and, and how was that? 

Frieda: I went back as soon as we had a convoy going back. I found my apartment sealed by the Gestapo and everything intact that I left, radio and all.

Um, I just resumed my efforts to get my musical work going again. I didn't have any old students. Some were killed, some were gone, some were... I had lost the people that—the, the two cellists, a violinist and cellist, were killed in concentration camps, and, you know, it was only one man left of the whole Jewish group that I had. And I did not like what we found back in Holland. 

Klaus: What did you find? 

Frieda: Well, we found that the people that had been riding the fence, as we call it, people that had not taken a strong stand, were kind of on top. I mean, they were the people that, that did well. And the people who had given their lives, nobody was talking about it, and it didn't mean anything to anybody and, and, uh, we had to fish for ourselves.

And people were not talking about the past. They were not talking about what happened, and of course I didn't feel like talking about it myself. I was glad that there was peace. But nobody was mentioning anything about those five years that I remember. 

Klaus: Were you recognized as, as, and what you did for the resistance? 

Frieda: No, absolutely not. I didn’t, I didn't talk about it and nobody talked about it. I never expected it to be so neglected.

Eric: Post-war Holland no longer felt like home. Three-quarters of all Dutch Jews—more than 100,000 people, including many of Frieda’s friends and relatives—had been murdered by the Nazis. 

In 1947, Frieda immigrated to the United States with the cello she had sold and later retrieved from Henri Heineken. She settled in California, where she rebuilt her musical career as a cellist and as a music teacher—first at UCLA and then as the head of her own music school. In the mid-1950s she became the founding artistic director and conductor of the Orange County Philharmonic Orchestra. She continued to give music lessons until the end of her life despite failing health and hearing loss.

Frieda died on March 5, 1995, at her home in Santa Fe, with Bobbie, her beloved of 25 years, at her side. It was less than a year after she gave her interview. Frieda Belinfante was 90 years old. 

In our next episode, Gad Beck, a daring Jewish Berliner, leverages relationships with lovers and Christian family members to save Jews from the Nazis. 

This episode was produced by Nahanni Rous, Inge De Taeye, and me, Eric Marcus. Our audio mixer was Anne Pope. Our studio engineer was Michael Bognar at CDM Sound Studios. Our theme music was composed by Fritz Myers. 

Thank you to our photo editor Michael Green, our founding editor and producer, Sara Burningham, and our founding production partner, Jenna Weiss-Berman at Pineapple Street Studios. 

The oral history interview with Frieda Belinfante from which this episode is drawn was provided courtesy of the Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

To learn more about the people and stories featured in our episodes, please visit makinggayhistory.org, where you’ll find links to additional information and archival photos, as well as full transcripts.

This special series on the experiences of LGBTQ people during the rise of the Nazi regime, World War II, and the Holocaust is a production of Making Gay History, in partnership with the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University.

I’m Eric Marcus. Until next time.