Harry Rozendaal z”l
Harry Rozendaal was born in 1930, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands to Katherine and Joseph Rozendaal. The war began for him in May 1940 when the Germans bombed Rotterdam.
His father joined the Netherlands Militia resistance fighters. In 1942 he was captured, imprisoned, tortured, and executed on December 29, 1942, in the concentration camp at Amersfoort at the age of 39.
On January 1, 1943, the family went into hiding. Harry, his brother Dov, and his sister Lisalotte initially hid together in a suburb of Rotterdam. But it was considered too risky to hide three children in one place, so they were sent to three different locations.
Between 1943 and 1945, Harry was relocated 21 times by resistance fighters across the Netherlands, including in Friesland. To reach Friesland, he crossed the IJsselmeer by boat escorted by resistance fighter Andres van der Meer. The boat was filled with German soldiers, and Harry had to remain calm so as not to arouse suspicion. Years later, Andres van der Meer was honored in the Garden of the Righteous at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
Harry’s mother went into hiding separately and joined the Keizer Resistance Group in Utrecht. Harry saw her again for one week in 1943 at a hiding place. That was the last time he saw her. She was captured in the fall of 1943 deported to Auschwitz, where she was murdered.
One of the last times he saw his mother, she showed him the final letter his father had written, where he expressed the wish that, if they survived, Harry and his siblings should receive a Jewish education.
After the war, Harry lived in a boys’ orphanage in Amsterdam until, in 1947, he traveled illegally to Palestine and joined the Haganah as a Machal volunteer fighter, witnessing the formation of the State of Israel.
In 1950, he returned to the Netherlands where he met his future wife, Lotty, at a New Year’s Eve party. In 1958, they immigrated to Canada and settled in Montreal, where they raised two children, Eddy and Betty before moving to Toronto in 1977.
