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If you walk down out of the main gate of UCU and turn left down the Prins Hendriklaan, when you reach the entrance to the Wilhelminapark, on the right hand side you will see an unremarkable building housing an ice cream parlour. This unremarkable building was the scene of a remarkable story in the war years in Utrecht, as it was “Kindjeshaven”, which started as a day care and became a boarding house where Jewish children were cared for and protected from deportation to the concentration camps.

Kindjeshaven was established by Trui van Lier (1914 - 2002), who had a Jewish father herself, and was a law student during the late 1930s. Trui had heard that many Jewish families who went into hiding or fled were unable to take their young children with them and decided to spend her war years keeping these children safe. When the invasion came to the Netherlands in 1940, Trui, along with her friend Jet Berdenis van Berlekom (1920-2010) started Kindjeshaven. Jet was conveniently a certified childcare worker, and the pair started the daycare by taking in children of wealthy families in the neighbourhood and also started to accept those from the children’s hospital, guardianship council and police. After establishing trust with the local population, they started taking in Jewish children who had nowhere else to go. The Jewish children were hidden in Kindjeshaven between the local Dutch children and later on in the war, the children of German soldiers. As soon as the Jewish children arrived, they were given a new identity, a new name and a story as to why they were there. In the early days Trui and Jet also started collaborating with the student resistance group Het Utrechts Kindercomite.

During the war years, the current ľ�ϸ���Ӱ�� College Utrecht Campus was a military base that was occupied by the Hermann Goering Paratrooper Division of the German army. Many of the offices of the occupying forces were also located around the Wilhelminapark area. It must be noted that what Trui and Jet accomplished by keeping children with an obviously Jewish appearance safe among these hostile surroundings required great courage. They managed to strengthen their position by also accepting children born during the war to German fathers, many of whom were sent to the Eastern front, leaving the German commandant in charge of the children’s care. By solving this problem for the occupiers, Trui and Jet were able to keep Kindjeshaven running and continue to offer shelter to those they had pledged to keep safe.

Trui also had a cousin and namesake, Truus (Geertruida) van Lier (1921-1943) who was also a resistance fighter during the war. Truus and her family lived closed by, on the Prins Hendriklaan 54, next to the Rietveld Schröder Huis. Today there is a plaque bearing Truus' name that marks the location. In 1943 Truus assassinated the Utrecht chief of police Gerard Kerlen, who was in preparation to arrest and deport a large number of Jews and resistance fighters. Soon after Truus was betrayed to the Germans and executed. In the wake of these events, Trui was also forced to go into hiding in 1944, but Jet kept Kindjeshaven going until February of 1945. In the later stages of the war in the Netherlands living conditions deteriorated severely, and Kindjeshaven was short of basic supplies such as water and soap. Despite all the hardships and dangers they experienced, all in all it is estimated that Trui and Jet were able to save 150 Jewish children from the holocaust.

After the war Trui was not immediately recognized for the sacrifices she made for the children, and indeed in some cases the Dutch society and government could be a little unsympathetic to the plight of the former freedom fighters. Trui received a bill from the city of Utrecht for the time Kindjeshaven was open during the war for taxes unpaid. However later on she did receive an apology from the Mayor of Utrecht and the tax bill she paid was refunded. Perhaps the most significant recognition she received for her courage was in 1994, when she was inducted into the Righteous among Nations by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Centre.

Since her passing, Trui and Truus’ stories have been kept alive by their second cousin Michèle van Lier, who also grew up living on the Prins Hendrikslaan. Through Michèle’s initiative and with the fundraising and support of the community, the playground in the Wilhelminapark has been named the Trui van Lier Speelkwartier, as Trui loved to play with the children under her care in that very playground. Nowadays the path from the building where Kindjeshaven was located, leading to the playground is adorned with 150 gold hearts, representing the 150 children that Trui and Jet were able to keep safe. In recent times unfortunately some of the hearts have disappeared from their mountings, but were replaced by the family. Trui is also honored with a flower monument across the stream from the playground, where 3000 bluebells bloom in spring to outline her name.