New York - Man Who Rescued 406 Jews In WWII Dies

Catskill, New York - Jaap Penraat, an architect and industrial designer who helped 406 Jews sneak out of the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, has died at his home in Catskill, New York, the cause was esophageal cancer.

Born in Amsterdam in 1918, Penraat was in his 20s when he began forging identity cards for Jews. After being discovered, he was imprisoned for several months and tortured, but refused to tell his captors anything.
After his release from prison, Penraat and other resistance members began disguising Jews as construction workers hired to work on a wall Hitler was building along France's Atlantic Coast. He made 20 trips, accompanying about 20 Jews each time to Lille, France where the French underground transported them to neutral Spain.

After the war, and he moved to the U-S in 1958.