Hans Georg Calmeyer

Born in the German city of Osnabrück on 23rd of June 1903, died 3rd of September 1972. Before the war he worked as a lawyer in Germany and came into conflict with the Nazi-party NSDAP because of his convictions but also because he had a Jewish female assistant which he refused to dismiss. Nevertheless he was assigned to the department of Innere Verwalting (State Department) during the war in the Netherlands in The Hague. There he was in charge of the department which had to deal with all the requests of Jewish families regarding their ancestors.
During the war the German occupier issued a lot of regulations for the Jewish population in the Netherlands. One of them was about the yellow star of David, about the registration of Jewish owned businesses. On the 10th of January 1941 all Jews had to register according to German regulations about the different degrees of Jewishness. The result of this was that the Jewish population was divided into several groups; Full-Jews (4 Jewish grandparents, Half-Jews (2 Jewish grandparents), One-Quarter-Jews (1 Jewish grandparent), Jews of Portuguese descent. Members of the Jewish population were allowed to put a request to Calmeyer’s department to proof that they were in fact ‘less’ Jewish than originally registered. All persons that put in a request appeared on the so-called Calmeyer-list and got a ‘Sperre’, they were excluded from deportation, for the time being.
Calmeyer was in fact in charge of executing the regulation 6/41 of 1941. He got his direct orders from the German occupiers but was part of the Dutch governmental organisation, his boss being K.J. Frederiks, secretary-general of the State Department and mr. De Waard as a direct colleague who did a lot of research for him in family-histories. But as a civil servant he played a crucial role in the lives of Jewish people during the war, he decided between life and death, indirectly. If he denied a request people were deported and ended up in Auschwitz or Sobibor.
One of the cases that was denied by him was that of the family Van der Bijl, 3 brothers and a sister (Jacob, Sientje, Mordechai and Samuel). They put in a request on the 25th of September 1942 and on the 1st of October 1942 this request is denied. In this request they tried to proof that they were largely of Portuguese descent.
Jacob died 30-06-1944, near Auschwitz,
Sientje (Sippora) died 23-03-1944, in Auschwitz,
Mordechai died 31-03-1944, in Auschwitz,
Samuel died 16-07-1943, in Sobibor.
In 1992 Calmeyer was awarded the Yad Vashem for saving a lot of Jewish people.

Sources;
Ondergang, by Jacques Presser, 1965.
Het geval Calmeyer, by Geraldien von Frijtag Drabbe Künzel, 2008.
Genealogie van de Joodse familie Van der Bijl, by T.Spaans – van der Bijl, 1989.