"During the Nazi occupation of Holland Mr. Zanoli's family had helped shelter a young boy until the Allied liberation in 1945." |
By Inna Lazareva
The Telegraph, August 15, 2014
"A 91-year-old Dutch man who was awarded a prestigious honour by the State of Israel for his family's role in saving a Jewish child from the Holocaust has returned his prize after six of his relatives were killed in Gaza. In 2011 the Israeli authorities declared Henk Zanoli 'Righteous Among the Nations' -- a title bestowed upon non-Jews who helped save Jews from the Holocaust. During the Nazi occupation of Holland Mr. Zanoli's family had helped shelter a young boy until the Allied liberation in 1945. But Mr. Zanoli returned his prize to the Israeli embassy in the Netherlands after hearing that six of his relatives had been killed during an attack on their home in Gaza. In a moving letter addressed to the Israeli ambassador and published in Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, he said: 'For me to hold on to the honour granted by the State of Israel, under these circumstances, will be both an insult to the memory of my courageous mother who risked her life and that of her children fighting against suppression and for the preservation of human life as well as an insult to those in my family, four generations on.' Mr. Zanoli's father was deported from Holland and subsequently died in the Dachau concentration camp due to his outspoken opposition to the German occupation.