The Amazing Adventures of Marion Pritchard
As late celebration of Holocaust Memorial Day – not to be confused with Yom HaShoah which is the Israeli version and which occurs on 23rd April – I am going to take a look at the ‘Holocaust’ stories told by a lady named Marion Pritchard.
Pritchard, born Marion Philippina van Binsbergen in 1920 in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, has been honoured as one of the greatest rescuers of jews from the ‘Holocaust’ during the Second World War. (1)
The irony is that when you read Pritchard’s account of her wartime escapades; it becomes immediately apparent that there are serious credibility issues with it.
For example her story is generally told as follows:
‘"It was a street I had known since I had been born, and all of a sudden you see little kids picked up by their pigtails or by a leg and thrown over the side of a truck," she told the author of the book "Voices from the Holocaust." "You stop but you can't believe it."
Pritchard saw two passersby attempt to stop the action, only to be seized. That's when, raised by a father who opposed Nazi ideology and a mother who supported social justice, she decided to fight.
Pritchard would feed, clothe, hide or obtain false identification papers for as many as 150 Dutch Jews, according to obituaries in the New York Times and the Washington Post. She also met, by chance, the German-born diarist Anne Frank before the girl went into hiding.
Kunin recalls Pritchard telling her about smuggling Jewish babies out of Amsterdam by declaring herself to be their unwed mother.
In her most extreme example of heroism, Pritchard hid a Jewish father and his three children for nearly three years, only to have police arrive to search the house. Not seeing the family under the floorboards, the authorities left before, to everyone's surprise, one returned. Pritchard grabbed a gun and fatally shot the officer, then snuck his body to a friend at a funeral home who buried it in someone else's coffin.
"She said, 'I had no choice — it was either him or them,'" Kunin recalls of the family crisis.’ (2)
Now it is this last section that got my immediate attention. Pritchard claims she that she shot an officer working with the Belgian police or the German security services that had returned to her house and then hid the body with the assistance of a friendly undertaker.
It sounds improbable, but it gets even worse when you realize that no one can quite seem to agree who exactly this officer was. According to the New York Times he was a ‘Dutch collaborator who had been a policeman’ (i.e. not an active officer in the Dutch police or the German security services as the Reformer suggests), (3) the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundations thinks he was a ‘Dutch policeman’ (4) as does Aish and the Jewish Virtual Library. (5)
You see what I mean? Was the man a police officer or was he a former police officer? Who was he working for? How did Marion know this detail about him?
You could chalk this up to Pritchard misremembering details, but there are other more serious problems.
One such can be found in the disposal of body of said Dutch policeman or ex-policeman in that the Reformer story claims that it was an undertaker who helped dispose of the body, (6) Aish claims it was a butcher and an undertaker (7) and according to the Jewish Virtual Library it was a jewish ballet dancer and a baker. (8)
So how did Pritchard dispose of the body? Or rather who disposed of it for her and why is there such confusion about who got rid of the body? Why would all these different sources get different ideas about what Pritchard said?
It doesn’t make sense: does it?
Factor in that if Pritchard did indeed kill a Dutch policeman/ex-policeman who had returned to spot check her place of residence following normal procedure. Then the German and Dutch authorities would have almost certainly come to interrogate her as to why their officer hadn’t returned (and she being a person formerly imprisoned as a member of the resistance would be all the more likely to be culpable).
This is especially so because a neighbour had allegedly denounced Pritchard. So why didn’t they report the gun shot that they must almost certainly have heard when Pritchard killed the Dutch man?
It just doesn’t ring true: does it?
That Pritchard’s life is filled with these constant ‘amazing miracles’ is demonstrated by another incident in the closing months of the Second World War.
Aish’s version is as follows:
‘The final year of World War Two was particularly difficult. That winter there was famine throughout the Netherlands and Marion had great difficulty in obtaining extra food for an adult and three growing children. One day, she was stopped by a German patrol who took her bicycle and the black market food she was transporting. Speaking in German, she told them exactly what she thought of Hitler and the Nazis. Incredibly, the soldiers gave her back her food and bike and let her go.’ (9)
Meanwhile Jewish Virtual Library asserts that:
‘Even German soldiers came to Pritchard’s aid near the end of the war. Pritchard bicycled north in search of food, loaded down with family silver. She successfully bartered with some farmers. On her way back home German soldiers stopped her. Exhausted and frustrated, Pritchard lost her temper. She told them what she thought of the war and of the way the Jews were being treated. Others tried to shut her up, knowing that people had been killed for lesser offenses. But Pritchard couldn’t stop. She was detained overnight, and the next morning two soldiers came to her. She expected to be killed. Instead they put her in a truck, along with her bike and the food she had bartered for, and drove her to safety.’ (10)
Notice the difference?
Aish’s version suggests he was she released on the same day and sent on her way by the German soldiers. Jewish Virtual Library’s version has that was in fact arrested, detained overnight and then driven in a truck to safety. Aish’s version makes no mention of the truck, the arrest or the overnight stay.
Why would Pritchard leave out such important details to her story? Aish and Jewish Virtual Library must be getting the story from somewhere and if not from Pritchard then from where are they sourcing it?
In addition the story itself while possible is just unbelievable. If you are arrested in war time by soldiers for a clear case of sedition then you are hardly going to be magically released without being interrogated by the authorities or a police record being created.
Also why – in a time of desperate petrol shortages – would German soldiers have taken the time to drive her to safety in a military truck? That would have been seen as treason by the military authorities and likely caused them to be subject to trial and execution.
You see what I mean?
Pritchard’s stories make absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Is she merely a bad and forgetful storyteller or something worse?
References
(1) http://www.jta.org/2016/12/21/news-opinion/united-states/marion-pritchard-dutch-student-who-saved-jews-during-holocaust-dies-at-96
(2) http://www.reformer.com/stories/vermont-holocaust-hero-dies,493442
(3) https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/world/europe/marion-pritchard-rescuer-of-jews.html?_r=0
(4) http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/others/marion-pritchard-dutch-savior/
(5) http://www.aish.com/ho/p/Marion-Pritchard-Rescuer-of-Dutch-Jews.html; http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Marion_Pritchard.html
(6) http://www.reformer.com/stories/vermont-holocaust-hero-dies,493442
(7) http://www.aish.com/ho/p/Marion-Pritchard-Rescuer-of-Dutch-Jews.html
(8) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Marion_Pritchard.html
(9) http://www.aish.com/ho/p/Marion-Pritchard-Rescuer-of-Dutch-Jews.html
(10) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Marion_Pritchard.html