Ruurd de Roo (1891-1969) en Jetje de Roo (1893-1970) zijn als 'Rechtvaardigen onder de Volkeren' onderscheiden door Yad Vashem vanwege hun hulp aan joden.
Bij hun waren de broers Meijer en Israel Kijzer, zoons van Salomon Kijzer (1892-1944) en Alida Kijzer-Waterman (1902–1956) ondergedoken.
Rescue Story
Ruurd and Jetje de Roo, both in their fifties, lived in Schinveld (prov. Limburg). Of their six children, two were unmarried and were still living on the farm. The de Roos were originally from the northern province of Friesland, believing Calvinists, who had relocated to the preponderantly Roman Catholic province of Limburg. Ruurd also worked at distributing coal in the area. In the course of 1943, the de Roos were approached by a liaison of a local resistance group who was looking for hiding addresses in the area for mostly Jewish children.
It was thus that 12-year-old Israel Kijzer, originally from Montfoort (prov. Utrecht) was brought to their farm. Earlier, in 1942, their father, Salomon Kijzer had been sent to a work camp in the Netherlands, and their mother Alida Kijzer with their five other children was ordered to move to Amsterdam. During a major razzia in the city in June 1943, their maternal grandparents were taken from their home for deportation. Alida Kijzer then took refuge in their sealed apartment with her five children. Neighbors provided them with food. She then contacted an underground group, that turned out to be the NV*, imploring them to locate hiding addresses for her children.
Since Israel terribly missed his siblings, he was soon allowed to be followed by his brother, 14-year-old Mijer. The two Kijzer children were presented as orphans from bombed out Rotterdam. Israel, answering to the name Bob Mijer worked on the farm and helped out with other chores. The de Roos became their new family. Even though the boys could walk around freely on the farm, a special hiding place was prepared for them in the haystack. They were forced to hide there a number of times when German soldiers, together with Dutch police, raided the area looking for hidden Jews.
The Keizer brothers stayed with the de Roos until the liberation of the area in September 1944. Their mother survived the war in hiding elsewhere in the southern part of the country. She temporarily rented a place close-by the de Roos, from where the Kijzer boys kept working on the family farm. When the northern part of the country was liberated in May 1945, the Kijzers returned to Amsterdam. Contact between daughter Willy de Roo and the Kijzer boys was reestablished in the sixties.
On August 10, 2003, Yad Vashem recognized Ruurd and Jetje de Roo, as Righteous Among the Nations.