Frieda Belinfante
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Frieda Belinfante (May 10, 1904, Amsterdam - Apr 26, 1995, Santa Fe, New Mexico) was a Dutch, half-Jewish, lesbian who gained fame as a cellist and conductor, and as a member of the Dutch Resistance during the second world war.
Frieda Belinfante, daughter of Aron (Ary) Belinfante and Georgine Antoinette Hesse, was descended from a line of Portuguese Sephardic Jews who arrived in Holland in the 17th century and whose ancestry can be traced back to 16th century Portugal. Other well known descendants of which include the writers Emilie Belinfante, Isaac Cohen Belinfante, teacher Moses Cohen Belinfante and the journalist Emilie Belinfante (II). Many of these descendants were known to have perished in the various Nazi death camps during the Holocaust.
Frieda Belinfante was a good friend of Willem Arondeus, one of the leaders of Raad van Verzet and an openly gay man. She actively contributed to the Dutch resistance, mainly by forging personal documents for Jews. Together with Arondeus, she was part of the group that organised the bombing of the population registry in Amsterdom on March 27, 1943. Thousands of files were destroyed, and the attempt to compare forged documents with documents in the registry were hindered. However her contributions to the Resistance have been largely forgotten over time.
After the war, Belinfante immigrated to the United States and continued her career in music. For a time, she was the conductor of the Orange County Philharmonic, until she was fired because she was a lesbian.
She died in 1995 from cancer.
Belinfante's biography became the subject of the documentary "But I Was a Girl" (1999). Her story was also featured in an exposition, funded by the Dutch government, about the persecution of gays and lesbians in the Second World War.
[edit] External link
[edit] References
- "Het begint met nee zeggen: biografieën rond verzet en homoseksualiteit 1940-1945" (2006), edited by Klaus Müller, Judith Schuyf
- "But I Was a Girl: The Story of Frieda Belinfante" (1999 documentary, Netherlands/USA; dir. Toni Boumans; producer Bernard Neuhaus)
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