Stephen Fry: Willem and Frieda - Defying the Nazis

Stephen Fry discovers why an act of sabotage by the Dutch Resistance that saved many Jews from the camps remains uncelebrated. During the occupation of the Netherlands in WW2, Willem Arondeus, a painter and Frieda Belinfante, a cellist, used their artistic skills to forge identity cards that saved thousands of Jews from the death camps. This was no mean task as, at the time, the Dutch had the most sophisticated identity card system in the world and, what’s more, the Nazis had a clever backup: each card they issued had a duplicate stored in the Amsterdam Central Records Office to prevent forgery.