Medal of honour for Jan Zwartendijk
Medal of honour for resistance hero Jan Zwartendijk On September 14, exactly 47 years after his death, resistance hero Jan Zwartendijk posthumously received the Medal of Honor for Charity in Gold. 'Mister Radio Philips' saved thousands of Jews during World War II by providing them with false visas. Zwartendijk was plant manager of a Philips radio factory in Kaunas and temporarily assumed the position of honorary consul. He ran into Nathan Gutwirth, a Jewish Dutchman with whom he occasionally exchanged newspapers and soccer reports. They devised an escape route that ran via the Trans-Siberian Express to Vladivostok and from there to Japan. From Japan, refugees could make the crossing to Curaçao. In 1940, he issued at least 2139 visas. Thenumber of people rescued is much higher still. Children could travel with their parents and many visas were copied illegally. Even after the consultation closed, Jan continued to issue visas. Eventually Zwartendijk no longer felt safe and returned to the Netherlands, where he had to fear for four more years that the Nazis would arrest him because of his activities in Lithuania.
After the war he was reprimanded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for issuing the visas, but in 1956 he was appointed Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau, and Thursday his son Rob and his daughter Edith accepted the Medal of Honor on behalf of their father. Want to know more about resistance hero Jan Zwartendijk? Read our longread.
