Audrey Hepburn, Righteous Gentile

Born in 1929 to an aristocratic Dutch mother and an English father, the famed actress Audrey Hepburn spent her childhood in Britain, Belgium, and the Netherlands. She was in the last of these when World War II began, and despite her young age, eventually became involved with the anti-Nazi resistance, as Rich Tenorio recounts:

[Hepburn’s] mother, the Baroness Ella van Heemstra, met Hitler in the 1930s and wrote admiringly about him in British fascist publications—but changed her mind during the brutal Nazi occupation of the Netherlands from 1940 to 1945. By contrast, the continuing Nazi sympathies of van Heemstra’s ex-husband—Hepburn’s father Joseph Ruston—kept him jailed [in Britain] for the duration of the war. . . .

The baroness began to support the Dutch resistance after the Nazis executed Hepburn’s beloved uncle, Otto Ernst Gelder [in 1942]. Volunteering for the resistance, [Hepburn] aided Jews in hiding, raising funds through dancing to keep them safe. [At her family’s urging, she also refused] an order to join a Nazi artists’ committee, ending her burgeoning dance career, which had made her [the city of] Arnhem’s most famous ballerina by 1944. . . . Hepburn also assisted a remarkable doctor, Hendrik Visser ’t Hooft, who helped shelter hundreds of Jews in the town of Velp throughout the war. . . .

Invited in 1958 to play the role of the most famous Dutch Holocaust victim in the film version of The Diary of Anne Frank, Hepburn found the subject too close to home and turned it down. . . Years after becoming a household name, [however], she took part in public readings of the play.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: Hollywood, Holocaust, Netherlands, Righteous Among the Nations

Why South Africa Has Led the Legal War against Israel

South Africa filed suit with the International Court of Justice in December accusing Israel of genocide. More recently, it requested that the court order the Jewish state to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip—something which, of course, Israel has been doing since the war began. Indeed, the country’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC) has had a long history of support for the Palestinian cause, but Orde Kittrie suggests that the current government, which is plagued by massive corruption, has more sinister motives for its fixation on accusing Israel of imagined crimes:

ANC-led South Africa has . . . repeatedly supported Hamas. In 2015 and 2018, the ANC and Hamas signed memoranda of understanding pledging cooperation against Israel. The Daily Maverick, a South African newspaper that previously won an international award for exposing ANC corruption, has reported claims that Iran “essentially paid the ANC to litigate against Israel in the ICJ.”

The ANC-led government says it is motivated by humanitarian principle. That’s contradicted by its support for Russia, and by [President Cyril] Ramaphosa’s warmly welcoming a visit in January by Mohamed Dagalo, the leader of the Sudanese-Arab Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia. Ramaphosa’s smiling, hand-holding welcome of Dagalo occurred two months after the RSF’s systematic massacre of hundreds of non-Arab Sudanese refugees in Darfur.

While the ANC has looted its own country and aided America’s enemies, the U.S. is insulating the party from the consequences of its corruption and mismanagement.

In Kittrie’s view, it is “time for Congress and the Biden administration to start helping South Africa’s people hold Ramaphosa accountable.”

Read more at The Hill

More about: International Law, Iran, South Africa