Non-Jewish Rescuers
In the late Spring of 1940, life for the Kanis family – Christians living in Amersfoort, the Netherlands – changed irreversibly. On May 10, 1940, Nazi Germany invaded the small nation of the Netherlands and just five days later, the Dutch forces surrendered to the invaders.
Father Jan Kanis was a postal clerk in Amersfoort, which allowed him to see residents’ returned mail and death notice. As the months under German occupation went on, he realized before others found out that the Nazis were killing Jews. Jan encouraged local Jews to go into hiding rather than register with the German authorities – as they were required to do starting in January 1941. Jan helped Jews hide in Amersfoort or nearby Oldebroek, where he had grown up. The “hiders” would first come to the Kanises’ house, before being transferred to a safe hiding place. Jan’s wife Nel was unfailingly vigilant to keep the Germans from discovering the hiders.
This sheet of paper contains food ration stamps for the period of October 1 to November 25, 1944. Dutch residents were subjected to the German occupiers’ rationing (limiting) of food and other supplies in order for material to be requisitioned for the German military. Each stamp on the sheet enabled purchase of a different item, such as brood (bread), or vleesch (meat). The stamps were torn away from the perforated sheet and exchanged with a shopkeeper for the desired food or other goods.
The Jewish hiders rescued by the Kanises could not legally exist. In order for them to have food to survive, the Kanises obtained identity and registration cards for fake people, who would then receive extra ration stamps and food. In turn, this food was distributed to the Jews in hiding. On one occasion, the Dutch Underground planned a raid on a distribution center to acquire more such ration stamps. Jan fled the scene, but was still arrested and sent to Dachau concentration camp in 1944. Shortly after, daughter Ali Kanis, just 17 years old, was found with incriminating receipts related to an anti-Nazi railroad strike and was also arrested. Ali spent the rest of the war in a women’s prison, forced to mend clothing for German soldiers.
The ration stamp sheet seen here was from just before the infamous “Hunger Winter” of 1944-45. While caring for her own family, assisting many hiders, and with her husband and daughter incarcerated – Nel Kanis was hard-pressed to make ends meet. Extra ration cards were the difference between life and death.
Ingrid Kanis Steppic was born in 1941 to Nel and Jan Kanis, and later moved to the United States, ultimately settling in Seattle. Ingrid shared her family story with the Holocaust Center for Humanity and donated the ration stamp sheet above to its permanent collection in 2016.
