Marion Philippina Pritchard was a Dutch-American social worker and psychoanalyst, who distinguished herself as a saviour of Jews in the Netherlands during the Second World War. Pritchard helped save approximately 150 Dutch Jews, most of them children, throughout the German occupation of the Netherlands. In addition to protecting these peoples lives, she was imprisoned by Nazis, worked in collaboration with the Dutch resistance, and shot dead a known Dutch informer to the Nazis to save Dutch Jewish children.
Early life
Pritchard was born Marion Philippina van Binsbergen on 7 November 1920 in Amsterdam and grew up in the Netherlands. She was the daughter of liberal judge Jacob van Binsbergen, who was on the board of regents for the prisons of Amsterdam. Her parents encouraged her to express her feelings and to expect honest answers from them. She recalled going to school with Jews in every class and reported that they were "considered Dutch like everyone else". At age 19, she enrolled in a school for social work in Amsterdam.
German occupation of the Netherlands
The German Army invaded and occupied the Netherlands in May 1940. During her social work studies, Pritchard was arrested while staying overnight during curfew with friends, who—unbeknownst to her—had been distributing transcripts of Allied radio broadcasts, and was imprisoned for seven months. In the spring of 1942, Pritchard witnessed a round-up of Jewish children's home occupants, including babies and eight-year-olds, being picked up by their limbs or hair and thrown into trucks to be taken away by Nazis, along with two women who tried to intervene. The two other women attacked the soldiers and were also taken away in a truck. She described her reaction to witnessing this event: "I was shocked and in tears, and after that I knew my rescue work was more important than anything else I might be doing". Pritchard first began her work as part of the Dutch underground, bringing food, clothing and papers to those in hiding from the Nazis. As part of her rescue plan, Pritchard registered Jewish infants as her own children and then placed them in safe, non-Jewish homes. She secured false identification papers and ration cards for Jewish adults. She then took on more dangerous activities when she was tasked with delivering a package to a home in the northern part of the country. Along the journey, she was given a baby girl by a stranger. Upon reaching her destination, she found out that the people she was supposed to deliver the package to had been arrested. She then took shelter with a man and his wife, originally not part of the operation, who agreed to take care of her and the baby. Her most-noted rescue occurred in late 1942 when she sheltered Fred Polak and his three children in the servants' quarters of a friend's villa in Huizen, outside Amsterdam. There the Polaks established a rapid process for hiding from the German inspections of the premises, which worked until in 1944 a Dutch collaborator, who had learned to return to hiding places in hopes of discovering Jews emerging from hiding after a half-hour interval, discovered the family. Pritchard saw no recourse, but to reach for a revolver and shoot the man. He was secreted to a funeral home and buried in the same coffin with another person without his fate being discovered by the authorities. She never discussed her activities with her parents or younger brother, lest they be endangered.
