Unknown to us that time, another family member was hauled away from her home in Amsterdam and incarcerated in Vught, the widowed Jewish mother of Henriette Bosmans, the 82 yr old Sara Benedicts.
Henriette suspecting she would be in danger of being arrested too, rushed in desperation to several municipalities to gather a copy of the birth certificate of her father and some other documents showing the German authorities that her father was non-jewish and she was baptised in the Catholic Church.
In the meantime her mother and cousin were in peril and needed help, but where to go? Someone with authority, someone with connections, someone she knew well, who else than Willem Mengelberg, the great conductor and illustrator of music. Henriette played under his baton and she must have known of his German sympathies, connections and influence.
The Dutch people held it against him when Mengelberg conducted in Berlin less than a month after the German takeover in Holland.
The lamentable attitude of Mengelberg during the German occupation did him in after the war, as he was no longer wanted in the concert halls of Europe.
But Henriette Bosmans wanted him now, very badly, and she was in luck. Mengelberg looked upon Seyss Inquart, the Nazi High Commisioner for the Netherlands (the notorious 6 ¼, as the Dutch still sneeringly refered to him) as a legitimate civil servant of the newly established authority.
So she approached him and duly informed Mengelberg of her problem, surely he could do a good word.
(Earlier sixteen Jews were to be removed from the Concertgebouw Orchestra, but Mengelberg was allowed to retain three of the sixteen musicians, but they should be moved nearer the middle of the orchestra so as not to be visible.)
So Henriette turned to her musical colleague with her urgent appeal. No more then a week later after seeing Willem, the gates of the camp swung open and her aged mum and my aunt Jo were free to go home.