Who was Trui van Lier, the law student who saved Jewish children?

A plaque on the façade of 4 Prins Hendriklaan is the only reminder of the "childcare centre". UU students have probably seen it when going to Vorst for ice cream, at number 6, or having a beer at Parkcafé, at number 2. That's the address where the law student Trui van Lier started a nursery and offered temporary shelter to Jewish children up to the age of seven.

Journalist and researcher Jim Terlingen has just published a book about this Utrecht resistance fighter. It features the text on the leaflet through which Trui promoted her crèche among potential clients: "Where can I be sure my child will be well looked after when I have to go to the doctor or the dentist, when I need a rest, or once the family expands?"  When she first opened the establishment in 1941, she didn't yet know that many of those clients would be Jewish children. 

Trui and Truus
Trui came from a family where going to university was already common. Her parents had also studied at the university level. Her mother, Corrie Guldensteeden Egeling, studied Biology at Utrecht University in the late 19th century. At the time, she was one of the few women enrolled. Trui's father, Alfred, who was Jewish, studied Law at UU and served on the board of the Utrechtsch Studenten Corps (USC) fraternity. Trui herself began studying History in 1934, with the aim of becoming a teacher. However, a law was passed stipulating that women could be dismissed from higher education as soon as they got married, leading Trui to lose her motivation for Biology and switch to Law.

Trui joined the UVSV sorority, which served as a USC counterpart. UVSV was co-founded by her mother and initially called ONS, an acronym that stands for "recreation after study" in Dutch. Trui became the sorority's president in 1935, though only briefly: she had to leave due to a thyroid condition that required surgery. She rejoined the sorority's board later, this time serving as chair of the novitiate committee.

As the chair of that committee, Trui helped with the hazing of her niece, Truus van Lier, who was six years her junior and was also going to study Law. Like Trui, Truus had also been named after their grandmother, Geertruida. Truus van Lier also became a resistance fighter: she is best known as "the Utrecht Hannie Schaft". In 1943, she shot and killed the feared NSB Chief of Police, Gerard Kerlen, on the corner of Walsteeg and Willemsplantsoen. The nieces were never able to graduate. Trui failed to graduate because of her work at Kindjeshaven, while Truus was arrested by the Germans and executed by a firing squad.

Trui van Lier, a Resistance Woman from Utrecht. Book by Jim Terlingen

NSB neighbourhood
The location of Trui’s nursery was not the most logical choice for a childcare centre operating in secret, as Utrecht-Oost was teeming with Germans and pro-German Dutch people. Both the SS and the NSB were headquartered on Maliebaan. Trui lived a stone’s throw from the nursery, as did the NSB leader, Anton Mussert, and many other NSB followers. Even Kindjeshaven’s next-door neighbour, the baker Pieter Bosch, was an NSB member from the very beginning. Across the street, at number 1, was a café where many German soldiers stationed at the Kromhout Barracks (nicknamed the Hermann Göring Barracks) would pop in for a drink. It is, therefore, a miracle that Trui was able to hide so many Jewish children in this spot.

Kindjeshaven. Screenshot from the video "Because their hearts spoke”

Many of those children came from Amsterdam, brought in by various resistance groups, including the Utrecht Children’s Committee, which collected Jewish children from their parents’ homes and took them to Utrecht. They soon identified Kindjeshaven as a temporary stopover for the youngest children, whilst they awaited more permanent hiding places. In many cases, those hiding places ended up becoming permanent homes because the parents never returned from the extermination camps.

The Children’s Committee also maintained a coded register of the children in the hope of reuniting them with their parents after the war. The students provided food vouchers for the foster families and children’s clothes. In total, students managed to keep some four hundred children out of the hands of the Germans.

Trui van Lier Speelkwartier at Wilhelminapark. Photo: DUB

To back down
It is astonishing that Kindjeshaven was not shut down. The baker who was associated with NSB most likely knew that the nursery next door was keeping Jewish children, but he never betrayed them. The fact that Kindjeshaven also took in several children of German soldiers also proved to be a protective factor. Many of them were children of German men and Dutch women who were placed in the crèche because the mothers were working and the fathers were fighting elsewhere at the front. If the children had a declaration of paternity, they formally came under the guardianship of the local headquarters of the German Unified Forces. When the German Security Service knocked on Trui’s door to round up children they suspected of being Jewish, Trui threatened that she would put all children out onto the street, including those under the guardianship of the German Unified Forces. “They backed down, as you can imagine,” Trui explained later.

Kindjeshaven operated until January 1945. Jet had to close its doors due to a lack of fuel, cleaning products, running water and, above all, food. By this time, Trui had already fled to Culemborg because she risked being arrested after the chaos of "Mad Tuesday", when the Dutch mistakenly believed they had already been liberated. She was 31 years old. Jet, then 24, fell in love with a Canadian liberator and followed him to Canada. The two kept in touch until Trui died at 88. Jet passed away in 2020.

Thesis
Kindjeshaven's story only became widely known in 1985, when Cor van Dam wrote a thesis on the persecution of Jews in Utrecht and mentioned Trui and Jet's work. Utrechts Nieuwsblad picked up the story, leading to Trui and Jet being honoured with the Yad Vashem certificate and the silver city medal.

A courtyard in Utrecht has been named after Jet. Trui and Truus have also been honoured with a floral tribute: opposite the spot where Truus Kerlen was shot, on Catharijnesingel, daffodils spelling the name Truus bloom every spring. In 2023, a similar floral tribute was laid out for Trui on Koningslaan, next to Wilhelminapark – the park where the Kindjeshaven children used to play and where a playground is now named after Trui.

The university honoured Trui, Truus and Wim Eggink, the driving force behind the Utrecht student resistance, by naming a hall in the Administration Building "Van Lier and Eggink Hall". UVSV also commemorates Trui: every year, on 4 May, the board lays a floral tribute at Prins Hendriklaan 4-6. During their introduction, new UVSV members are expected to familiarise themselves with this part of the sorority’s history.