Johan Leonard 'Leo' Uitzinger

Johan Leonard Uitzinger was awarded the the Verzetsherdenkingskruis, the Dutch Resistance Memorial Cross, after WWII. The medal was instituted by Royal Decree (No. 104) on 29 December 1980, after the 35th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands. It is worn after the War Memorial Cross and before the Medal of Order and Peace. The cross is only awarded at the request of a person eligible to receive it. Approximately 15,000 have been awarded, recorded in the Gedenkenboek verzetsherdenkingskruis https://wwii-netherlands-escape-lines.com/resistance-memorial-cross/

My father and mother helped a lot of our family come to America. The first ones were Marcel, my mother's brother, and his wife, Sophie (whom I had the pleasure of finding and visiting as an American soldier shortly after the liberation of Paris). Then came Fella and Walter Goldsmith and their two sons (one son, Otto, had been hidden by a gentile Dutch family). They had lived in hiding in an attic in Amsterdam. After that came my father's sister Betty Stamm and her daughter, Ruth, and granddaughter, Ingrid, who had been hidden and protected by a Dutch gentile, Leo Uitzinger. (He looked after them so well that Ruth had the child Ingrid with him.) The Goldsmiths and the Stamms also moved to Flushing. Walter G. opened a bicycle store (he had owned a large one in Amsterdam), and Betty Stamm worked as a baby nurse.