the Netherlands. Erika was summoned to SD headquarters. There she was told that if she divorced her Jewish husband, she would get a good job. She refused, however, and destroyed all her correspondence with Stefan. The defeat of the German army at Stalingrad accelerated the persecution of Jews in occupied Europe. Erika took in several people she knew to be Jewish to live at the house: Erwin Geismar, Abraham "Appie" Keizer, and Hendrik "Henkie" Westermans, whose real name was Chanan Floersheim. After the war, the Dutch resistance organization "Vrije Groupen Amsterdam" (VGA) issued a certificate that Erika had participated in various underground activities during the occupation. Arrest and imprisonment On 4 September 1943 Floersheim’s relatives the Polaks (Frits, Berni and Ilse) arrived at the house at his suggestion because they had been forced to leave the place they were hiding. The next day, German police, acting on a tip, raided the house, arresting the Polaks, Erwin Geismar, and Erika Heymann. Appie Keizer was away. Floersheim was there, but managed to escape across a balcony. Erika’s children were not at home and were able to stay at the Argonautenstraat for the rest of the war. The Polaks and Mr Geismar almost certainly perished in the concentration camps. Appie Keizer hid elsewhere for the rest of the war. Chanan Floersheim escaped through Belgium and France into Spain, where he remained until 1944, eventually moving to British-controlled Palestine. Erika Heymann was sentenced to confinement through the end of the war for the crime of Judenhilfe, aiding Jews. She was soon transferred to the concentration camp at Vught. At Vught she was made to work sorting and repairing stolen clothes. She was then moved to a factory where inmates assembled gas masks for the German Army. She developed leukemia, for which exposure to benzene is a known cause. Erika was at Vught during the Bunker Tragedy of January 1944, during which 74 women were ordered by the camp commander into a cell measuring about 9 square meters. Ten women died of asphyxiation. She had tried to avert the action that led to this tragedy, but as she was German and most of the prisoners were Dutch, her advice was ignored. She was released from Vught in 1944 on Hitler's birthday. A Dutch neurosurgeon who had assisted in removing a bullet from the brain of a high German officer was allowed to submit a list