I was fortunate enough to be able to see an extraordinary exhibit of photography by Annemie Wolff, who took portraits of Jews in Amsterdam in 1943; this was at Mary Washington University in Fredericksburg, Virginia. She and her husband Helmut Wolff, a Jewish architect, had emigrated from Germany to the Netherlands when the Nazis took power. When the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, they attempted suicide. She survived, and worked as a photographer during and after the war. It was believed that she had destroyed her wartime photographs, but in 2008, a collection of 100 negative rolls were found. These contained portraits of about 400 Jewish people, 300 of whom were identified. About half of these survived the war; researchers documented their stories, some of which are shared in the exhibition. Her subjects were in dire circumstances, but their portraits often show the warmth of ordinary people sitting for the photographer, their situation only visible in the cloth Stars of David sewn onto their blouses or jackets by Nazi order.
One pair of photographs was particularly remarkable. They each showed a woman holding a baby, the same baby, whose name was Berdina Sere Pront. One of the women wore a masculine suit and tie. They were a lesbian couple, Cocky Hennekam and Greet van Hinte, who cared for the baby for her Jewish parents who had gone into hiding. Their parents survived the war, and the foster mothers returned their child to them. But Berdi always kept in touch with her foster mothers.