Elias (Elis) Pakkedrager and his family during and after the war

By: Herbert Markus

Elias Pakkedrager gave mathematics lessons on the Jewish High school, Joodsche HBS, in Amsterdam.
Elias, his wife Sarah, their two children Yehuda and Elishewa and Sara's mother came all five via Westerbork to Bergen Belsen. The eldest son of Elias and Sarah, Abraham, died in 1943 in Amsterdam when he was hit by a shard of anti-aircraft artillery.
Elias died on April 20, 1945, three days after the British liberated Bergen Belsen. His wife Sarah died a few months earlier on December 29, 1944, also in Bergen Belsen.
Yehoshua and Henny Birnbaum, who also took care of Yehuda and Elishewa, held an orphanage and added orphans wherever they met them along the way from the Westerbork days through their stay in Bergen Belsen and after the war.

On the Yom Hashoah, memorial day of the holocaust, of 2011 they received, through their “children”, the first ” אות המציל היהודי “, “Recognition of saving Jews”, that was granted by Bnei Brit and the Keren HaKayemet. See an article in the" Haaretz" of 29th April, 2011 named :
",כולם היו ילדיהם - בני הזוג היהודים שהקימו בית למאות יתומים בשואה
Here you can find some facts on this interesting story.

Yehuda and Elishewa were put on a train from Bergen Belsen destined for Theresienstadt when the Allies approached Bergen Belsen. That train drove around from April 10 till April 22 1945 but never reached Theresienstadt because of the bombarded German rail roads. The Russians liberated the train near the village of Trobitz. Many people died on the train and at least 60 more after it was liberated

Yehuda and Elishewa returned in June/July 1945 to Holland and were staying with family members and in an orphanage of Nathan Dasberg in Hilversum, where their grandparents (see below) also lived.
In 1948, before the creation of the state, Elishewa and Yehuda came to Israel where a brother of their mother lived in a kibutz.

Yehuda was born in 1937.
He calls himself now Yehuda Kedar and has a son called Eli, named after his father. Yehuda Kedar lives today in kibutz Sdé Nechemia also called Chuliot in Northern Israel.
Elishewa left Israel in 1969 and went to New York where she met and married her husband Birnbaum (no relation to their foster parents). They live there with their children and grandchildren.

The parents of Elias, Abraham (Bram) Pakkedrager and his wife, were with the group of 550 Jews from Bergen Belsen who were exchanged with about 1000 German Templers in former Palestine. See “Affiliation with the Third Reich“ in this Wikipedia article

They lived for a time in Ramat Gan and went after the war back to the Netherlands. His wife died in 1948 and Abraham remarried with Greet Duque. He died in 1962.