The first woman-entered parliament in The Netherlands and the Dutch bishops forbade the Catholic population to read socialist writings and membership of socialist organizations.

That didn’t stop 33yr. old nanny and nurse Johanna (Jo) Maria Geertruida Bosmans, sister of my father Antoon, marrying Herman Jan van der Wal on Labour Day, Saturday 1st May 1918. She was beaming with a bunch of red tulips as a bridal bouquet and the groom wore proudly a red tulip in his buttonhole as convinced socialists,
The Van der Wal family lived in the Lombok neighbourhood in Arnhem and were very poor. It was a large household and Herman started work as a bread deliveryman at a young age. Jo was a nanny and keeping household with a rich family of nobility in Ellecom. Both have worked hard and Aunt Jo told Martha once, she pitied that they didn’t beget any children. She had several miscarriages over the years.
They did a lot of good works in particular for the kids, as they took care of refugee children from Berlin, of which many were Jewish and that was well before the war.‘Many talk, and many are short on deeds, but not them’, Martha, my niece once said.