Nationality Dutch Other names "Ellie", "Miep" | Years active 1944–1945 Name Hanneke Ippisch | |
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Born 23 March 1925 ( 1925-03-23 ) Benningbroek, Netherlands Occupation Dutch resistance worker Notable work Sky: a True Story of Courage during World War II Died April 15, 2012, Missoula, Montana, United States Books Sky: A True Story of Courage During World War II | ||
Hanneke ippisch eikema
Hanneke Eikema (23 March 1925 – 15 April 2012) was a Dutch woman who, during World War II, helped ferry Jewish children to safety and assisted in the financial logistics of the Dutch resistance.
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Biography
Eikema was born in Benningbroek and grew up in Zaandam, the daughter of a Protestant minister who was himself involved with the resistance. After she saw one of her classmates and her family get arrested and deported, she began ferrying Jewish children to safety in Friesland (by train, and on the Veerdienst Enkhuizen – Stavoren, the Enkhuizen-Stavoren ferry), under the nickname "Ellie". She joined the resistance proper in 1944 and, now named "Miep", became the personal courier for Walraven van Hall, leader and banker of the movement, entrusted with carrying large amounts of money and arranging meetings of senior resistance members.
Following information obtained under torture from Teus van Vliet, who himself had been betrayed by the Dutch collaborator Johan van Lom, Eikema, along with van Hall and four other senior members of the resistance, was arrested on 27 January 1945 in Amsterdam, on the Leidsegracht. She was interrogated in the prison on the Amstelveenseweg, by Emil Rühl. Van Hall was executed a few weeks later, but Eikema survived the war.
Eikema moved to Sweden, and married Fiddi Rappe, a member of the nobility, with whom she emigrated to America. Her husband, a biochemist, got a job at the University of California, Berkeley, and they settled in the San Francisco Bay area, where she worked as an art teacher and ran a Dutch restaurant. Later the family (by then with four children) moved to Montana, and Eikema divorced her Swedish husband and married an American, Les Ippisch. She began a bed and breakfast, and gave lectures and wrote about her war experiences. She wrote a number of books for children, including Sky: a True Story of Courage during World War II; the title ("Sky") was derived from the view of the sky from her prison window on the Amstelveenseweg. She died at age 87 of Alzheimer's disease, in Missoula, Montana.