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 on Times of Israel: https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-hollywood-idol-audrey-hepburn-helped-save-dutch-jews-during-the-holocaust/