Yad Vashem and The Snappers

JERUSALEM (AP) -- A Dutch couple posthumously received the highest honor for non-Jews from Israel's Holocaust center Thursday for their bravery in sheltering a Jewish family from the Nazis during World War II.

Hendrikus and Martha Snapper were named "Righteous Among the Nations" at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

The recognition is given to non-Jews who rescued Jews from the Nazis during the war, when 6 million Jews were killed. More than 21,000 have been honored since the designation was created in 1963.

The Snappers were in their early forties with six children when the war reached the Netherlands in 1940.

As a labor official in the town of Naaldwijk, Hendrikus Snapper was confronted early on with the registration of Jews, the appropriation of Jewish property and the expulsion of Jewish children from public schools, Yad Vashem officials said.

In the summer of 1942, he became active in a local underground group and was put in contact with a Jewish couple, Rosa and Levy de Hartog.

The de Hartogs had received a deportation notice and were frantically searching for a hiding place. The Snappers decided to open their home to Rosa de Hartog, whom they presented as their housekeeper. They found hiding places for Levy de Hartog and their five children, according to Yad Vashem officials.

"It's hard to imagine the terrible panic, and the courage it took to respond to such a cry," said Irena Steinefeldt, spokeswoman for Yad Vashem.

"Most houses (in the Netherlands) were too small for hiding spaces. People had to take in strangers in clear view and concoct a reason for their presence," said Johan Snapper, the Snappers' son, now a professor of German and Dutch studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

The penalty for hiding Jews was a concentration camp or death, Snapper said, speaking at the ceremony. "Our parents understood that."

In May 1943, a massive recruitment of Dutch men for forced labor in Germany began. Snapper used his position at the labor exchange to forge documents and falsify information for the de Hartogs.

The couple faced a test in 1944, when six German S.S. soldiers were billeted in the Snapper home.

The entire de Hartog family survived the war and was reunited afterward. A photograph of the two families together after liberation was on display during the ceremony.

Hendrikus Snapper died in 1979 and Martha Snapper in 1980. Their names were unveiled on the wall of Righteous Among the Nations at the ceremony Thursday.

More than 30 members of the extended Snapper family traveled to Israel for the ceremony. Surviving children of the de Hartogs - Truus de Hartog of the Netherlands, and Salomon de Hartog of Israel - were also present.

"Nothing has ever made a bigger impact on me, as young as I was," Johan Snapper said of witnessing his parents' heroism.