Hilde Verdoner-Sluizer (1909–1944)

Hilde Sluizer was born to a middle-class Jewish family in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She excelled in high school, especially in languages. After graduation, she studied homemaking for two years, and then took a job as a secretary in Rome. She then returned to Amsterdam where, at age 24 in 1933, she married Gerrit Verdoner. After that her name became Hilde Verdoner-Sluizer. The couple moved to Hilversum, a town in the heart of the Netherlands. They lived in a spacious house in a tree-lined neighborhood with their three children, Yoka, Francisca, and Otto. In May 1940, in World War II, Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands. The Nazis forced Gerrit out of business and confiscated their home. The family moved in with Gerrit's parents in Amsterdam. The underground resistance helped place their children in hiding. Hilde and Gerrit were rounded up in 1942 and sent to the Westerbork transit camp/concentration camp. Gerrit worked for the camp's Nazi-appointed Jewish administration, which saved the couple for a time from further deportation (he survived the Holocaust as did the three children).

On February 8, 1944, Hilde was deported to Auschwitz and murdered three days later; she was 34 years old. Her letters written from Westerbork were filled with concern for her family and friends. They were published in a collection edited by one of daughters, translated into English in 1990 as
Signs of Life: The Letters of Hilde Verdoner-Sluizer from Nazi Transit Camp Westerbork, 1942-1944.