PvH War Graves Herz, General Cemetery Sneek

William Herz 1898-1944 and Hanna Herz-Guttmann 1895-1944 (people in hiding)

The Jewish couple William Herz and Hanna Herz-Guttmann fled from Germany to the Netherlands with their only child Sylvia Minna shortly before the outbreak of World War II. When the persecution of Jews began in the Netherlands, they went into hiding in Friesland with the help of Pastor Lourens Touwen of Makkum. First the family was housed in Makkum, later in Pingjum. Because it was too burdensome for the host family to keep three people in hiding, the parents were housed at different addresses in Tzum. Daughter Sylvia remained in Pingjum.

Possibly due to prolonged and solitary confinement, William and Hanna became increasingly difficult to get along with. Thus, they regularly showed up on the street. This endangered the resistance. Moreover, at the post office in Franeker a letter from William addressed to the Ortskommandant was intercepted. In that letter he mentioned the names of important resistance people. Then, on January 30, 1944, William and Hanna were killed by the resistance. On February 3, 1944, they were buried in the General Cemetery in Sneek.

Their daughter Sylvia, who left after the war first for Israel and later for the United States, never knew about this. In fact, she had been told that her parents had been killed by the Germans. She had a stone placed on their grave in 1958 with the inscription: 'Both shot unmercifully by the Nazis, on their way to Westerbork because of their Israelite faith,' a grave inscription that the resistance and the municipality did struggle with after the war.