A decade ago, Matthew J. McCarthy learned that his colleague’s great-grandfather had been interned in a concentration camp for rescuing two Jewish girls during the Holocaust.
The Silver Spring attorney took on this case as a pro bono matter in 2021, demonstrating that Frans Gerardus Swidde and Johanna Timmers should be posthumously recognized for their “courage and selflessness” in rescuing Jewish individuals at “immense personal risk.”
McCarthy recently saw the case’s success — in late July, his law firm, McCarthy Legal & Consulting, P.C., announced that Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, will bestow his clients the title of “Righteous Among the Nations.” The “esteemed title” recognizes non-Jewish individuals who risked their lives to aid and save Jews during the Holocaust.
“One of the realities of being a litigator is that resolutions to complex cases very rarely come quickly,” McCarthy told Washington Jewish Week. “But for me, I consider this one of the most important cases I’ve ever had the honor to work on.”
Yad Vashem has four qualifications a candidate must meet in order to earn the title “Righteous Among the Nations.” The rescuer must have been “actively involved in saving Jews from the threat of death or deportation to concentration camps or killing centers,” “risked their own life or liberty in their attempt to save Jews” and had the original motive of protecting and saving Jews from the Holocaust. The final criterion is firsthand testimony from those rescued.
Swidde and Timmers sheltered and protected their neighbors’ daughters, Rebecca and Sellie Weijl, during the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II.
“The Swidde family’s bravery came at a severe cost,” a press release read. “Frans Gerardus Swidde was arrested and interned for six months in a concentration camp as a political prisoner due to his involvement with the rescue.”
The Swidde family’s descendants, including grandson Frans Drost, will accept a medal bearing their name and a certificate of honor at a ceremony in The Hague later this year, according to the press release.
The Hague is where McCarthy first learned of the Swiddes’ story. He and Lisa Drost, Swidde’s great-granddaughter, both worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague in 2015: “We got to know each other, working in a court that was set up to punish those who brought about a genocide,” McCarthy said.
“[Lisa] told me the story about her great-grandfather,” McCarthy added, recalling that he’d asked if the Drosts had applied for recognition through the “Righteous Among the Nations.” “I thought what [Swidde] did was a very heroic act, something that was worthy of being remembered, even though he himself was a very humble man and never spoke about it.”
Lisa Drost told McCarthy that her father, Frans, had applied for this recognition through Yad Vashem’s Commission on Designation of the Righteous years earlier, but was denied. In 2008, the Commission wrote to Frans Drost saying that the family records he’d presented didn’t contain enough evidence to affirmatively prove the case, McCarthy said.
“Part of the criteria to prove the case is that one has to have direct testimony from one of the survivors who was rescued, and so, [in 2021,] I offered to take the case on as a pro bono matter if the family was interested,” McCarthy said.
Over the next three years, he did intensive research for the fact-finding process, poring over archives from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, European Holocaust museums and European repositories, as well as family documents.
But his “lucky break” lay in a memoir by Dutch Holocaust survivor Carry Ulreich.
“In her memoir, which some newspapers have called the ‘Anne Frank story with a happy ending,’ Carry Ulreich talks about her connection to the Swidde family,” McCarthy said. “The name ‘Swidde’ was unusual enough that that was one of the keys to our success.”
McCarthy also found a few letters between the Swidde family and the two Weijl sisters that mentioned their rescue. He discovered certificates dating back to the 1940s indicating that the Weijl sisters planted trees in the Dutch forest of Israel’s Jewish National Fund forest in honor of Swidde’s “great deed.”
“Through deep research, according to the criteria laid out by the Commission, we were eventually able to gather up enough information to submit it to the Commission, which then goes through its own independent review process,” McCarthy said.
The Commission informed McCarthy that, through its own research, it had determined that there was sufficient evidence to prove that Swidde and Timmers had rescued the Weijl sisters. The Commission then worked with the families who took the two sisters into safety after Swidde was imprisoned, and the case was a success.
“It is with the utmost pleasure and gratitude that we recognize Matt McCarthy for the vital role he played in researching the case of the Swidde family,” Frans Drost said in the press release. “Knowing from experience how difficult it can be to get an application approved by Yad Vashem we can only thank Mr. McCarthy for his expertise, excellent research, diligence, and perseverance during the investigation and the way he presented the case before Yad Vashem. Thanks to all his efforts the outcome is all that we could have hoped for.”
Though McCarthy had never taken on a case related to Holocaust remembrance before this one, he said he has long been familiar with that history, having grown up in Miami with friends who were grandchildren of Holocaust survivors.
“It’s something that I’ve always been keenly aware of, and when the opportunity came to honor somebody who had been on the right side, who had done the right thing, despite very severe consequences to himself, … I thought that was a worthy thing to devote my time and energy towards,” McCarthy said.
“I’ve gained some important knowledge and important skills, and I hope that this won’t be the last one.”
