Overview

Yad Vashem award

Appreciation for the helpers after the war

At the request of Otto Frank, the helpers were awarded the Yad Vashem honorary title of ‘Righteous under the Nations’. It is an award for non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews. On 4 April 1973, Kugler was presented with the Yad Vashem medal by the Israeli ambassador Meron in Toronto, where he lived.

‘The people who did everything for us, Mr Kleiman, Kugler, Miep Gies and her husband, as well as Bep Voskuijl and her father, are more than friends. We are in their debt, in every possible way.’
Otto Frank, 7 July 1945

‘I could hardly allow my best friends to fall into the hands of the Nazis! I thank you for the award, but in all honesty, I don’t feel that I deserve it.’
Victor Kugler, Het Vrije Volk, 5 June 1978