On this day, 10 May 1904 Dutch cellist, conductor, lesbian and anti-Nazi resistance member Frieda Belinfante was born in Amsterdam. During the German occupation she joined the resistance and began forging documents for people hiding from the Nazis and their collaborators.
Along with gay resistance fighter Willem Arondeus Belinfante helped plan a successful attack on the Amsterdam population registry which destroyed ID records so that forged papers couldn’t be identified. While the other members of the group were captured and executed, she managed to evade capture by disguising herself as a man, and eventually fleeing to Switzerland with the help of the French resistance.
Belinfante survived the war and lived until the age of 90.
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