The untold story of Brisbane’s Holocaust heroes

Tales of extreme bravery, like that of Jacob and Klaasje van der Haar, who hid a Jewish baby and teen from the Nazis, will be preserved in Brisbane’s new Holocaust museum and education centre

Watching elderly veterans’ wave as they drove past in Anzac parade after Anzac parade, their numbers dwindling year after year, Ingrid Bradford’s thoughts always turned to her beloved late grandparents.

Her Oma and Opa, Klaasje and Jacob van der Haar, had been Brisbane residents more than 40 years when a letter came notifying the couple they were to be honoured for risking their lives to save a Jewish baby and teenage girl during the Holocaust.

Jacob had died by then and Klaasje, in her 90s, was too frail to travel to Sydney for the official ceremony.

The letter was put aside as family concentrated on caring for their beloved Oma, eventually to be forever reunited with her cherished husband.

Grief, then everyday life, swallowed time, the letter lost, the honour all but forgotten. Except on Anzac Day, when Bradford’s thoughts inevitably turned to the deadly risks her Dutch grandparents took and the mystery award they never received. It would take two years, countless emails and lots of determination before Bradford tracked down the details and, in an emotional ceremony, accepted a medal on her grandparents’ behalf, almost 20 years after the original letter was sent.

Read the article by Leanne Edmistone in the Courier Mail.