Anna Elisabeth Kennedy

Hattem, Anna Elizabeth (Kennedy)

Anna Elizabeth Kennedy (b. 1917) lived in Amsterdam during the Second World War. She had a women’s fashion shop in the Beethovenstraat and a workshop for sewing clothes. Anna’s shop was very close to the Sicherheitsdienst (the intelligence agency of the SS) headquarters in the Euterpestraat. However, she gave shelter to no fewer than seven Jews, whom she saved from deportation and death in the Nazi camps. Albert Hattem (b. 1913) had a relationship with Anna Kennedy. Anna understood the danger Albert was in and offered to hide him; his mother, Fani Hattem (née Capuan, b. 1881); his sister and her husband, Mari and Mois Alyon; his cousin Jacques Eskenazi; and two friends, Leon Mizrachi and Albert Yohai. Aside from these seven people, two babies were born during the hiding period: one to Mari and Mois Alyon and the second to Anna Kennedy and Albert Hattem. Anna’s living quarters were behind the shop; beneath her home, in the basement of the house, Albert and his relatives and friends were in hiding. Albert and his relatives were of Turkish origin. They arrived in Holland in the 1920s and kept their Turkish citizenship. Nevertheless, they fully integrated into Dutch society and were successful. After a couple of years, their passports expired, and they started the procedure to obtain Dutch citizenship. When the Germans invaded the Netherlands, however, the procedure was never finished, so they remained Turkish and therefore were under Turkish protection during the first part of the war.

Beginning on January 1, 1943, however, the Germans started arresting and deporting the Turkish Jews too, with the permission of the Turkish government. It was at this point that Albert Hattem and his relatives went into hiding with Anna. The Hattems owned a carpet store. Before they went into hiding, they arranged for the storage of a great number of carpets in a secret place. During the time they were hiding, Anna was able to sell some of the rugs to get money to buy food for the many people hiding in her basement. In May 1945 Amsterdam was liberated, and the hiders went their separate ways. But the relationship between all of them remained very strong and warm. Anna Kennedy and Albert Hattem were married; they had a daughter who was born during the war, and after the war, a son was born to them. On December 3, 2013, Yad Vashem recognized Anna Elizabeth (Kennedy) Hattem as Righteous Among the Nations.