Geertruida Elisabeth Middendorp (November 21, 1911 – July 13, 2007) was a member of the World War II Dutch resistance group National Organization for Helping People in Hiding (Landelijke Organisatie voor Hulp aan Onderduikers, LO).
The majority of the illegal papers appeared in print runs of a few hundred, but some achieved a circulation in the tens of thousands.
Every time a man showed his face on the street, he could be captured by anyone because we didn't know who was "pro" or "anti."
The mandatory wearing of the yellow star, which went into effect in late April, 1940, infuriated the Middendorp family as did informers and collaborators.
The underground newspaper, De Vonk printed 300,000 paper stars with inscription, "Jews and Non-Jews are ones."
By mid-1944, Middendorp took her two sons over the IJsselmeer by a barge to Friesland to a farm, one to keep the boys safe and the second reason was the coupons she could use to feed the refugees.
In this region with its large cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, the people had almost reached the end of their endurance from the misery and starvation which had accompanied the "Hunger Winter".
She remembered when Americans started flying over, very low, dropping crates of canned goods, sometimes in fields, sometimes in streets, but without parachutes.
It seems to me that the most lasting impressions in life are those you receive as a young adult, they stick with you, and strange as it was, the older she got, the closer she felt to the war years.