Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. The other day, I was talking to a
Speaker 1: friend of mine who said he had just seen some
Speaker 1: videos about a lesbian couple, one of whom was Jewish
Speaker 1: and was a resistance fighter during World War Two, And
Speaker 1: I immediately said, was it frieda Belle? And Fonto It
Speaker 1: was not, But that conversation made me want to rerun
Speaker 1: our episode on her because she was awesome. I concur
Speaker 1: and this episode originally came out on November twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So regular
Speaker 1: listeners to the podcast might recall a while back when
Speaker 1: we talked in one of our listener mail segments about
Speaker 1: a fantastic gift that we got, which was a set
Speaker 1: of the Chutzpau comic books that were produced by the
Speaker 1: Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh. Well, that listener segment led to
Speaker 1: us talking with the Holocaust Center about their upcoming volume
Speaker 1: of the comic, which focuses on women upstanders, real life
Speaker 1: superheroes who stood up against wrong, and we decided to
Speaker 1: do an episode on one of the women featured in
Speaker 1: that comic, and we're also going to have interviews with
Speaker 1: some of the team behind the Chutzpau comic on an
Speaker 1: upcoming episode. But today we are covering Frida Belinfante, a
Speaker 1: woman who is inspiring both as a musician and as
Speaker 1: a member of the Dutch Resistance who risked her life
Speaker 1: again and again during World War Two in defiance of
Speaker 1: the German occupation of the Netherlands. She was born on
Speaker 1: May tenth, nineteen oh four, in Amsterdam, the third daughter
Speaker 1: in her family. Her older sisters were Dorothea who went
Speaker 1: by Dolly, and Renee. The fourth Belinfanta child was a
Speaker 1: boy named Robert Paul. Frida would later say that her
Speaker 1: mother had wanted a boy when she was born and quote,
Speaker 1: I have a lot of qualities that could have been
Speaker 1: a boy, but I was a girl. Frida learned around
Speaker 1: age ten that she had another brother as well. This
Speaker 1: was a child of her father's that he had before
Speaker 1: marrying their mother, and this half brother was named Hugo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Hugo was not a constant part of their lives, but
Speaker 1: kind of came in and out as their their half brother,
Speaker 1: and she knew him for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1: Freda's family is very large. Her father, Aaron Bellnfanta, had
Speaker 1: nine siblings and her mother, Georgine Antoinette Hess had either
Speaker 1: eight or nine siblings. Freda could not recall for sure
Speaker 1: in the interview she gave where she relaid that although
Speaker 1: the two sides of the family didn't really have much
Speaker 1: in common and so they weren't particularly close like, they
Speaker 1: didn't all gather together. Though her father had initially been
Speaker 1: on track for a career in medicine, he decided at
Speaker 1: twenty one that music was actually his life's path, and
Speaker 1: by the time Frida was born, her father headed an
Speaker 1: Amsterdam music school and was a very prominent pianist. According
Speaker 1: to her account, her parents didn't raise their children in
Speaker 1: any particularly religious manner, although her father was Jewish. When
Speaker 1: she asked her father about religion, he told her that
Speaker 1: she should read up on all kinds of religions and
Speaker 1: see if there was something that appealed to her and
Speaker 1: that she could believe in. And from an early age,
Speaker 1: all of the Bell and Fonta children played music. Aaron
Speaker 1: decided that Frieda should play the cello, and Frida's sister
Speaker 1: Renee once noted in an interview that this was kind
Speaker 1: of a strange choice to give Frida a cello, because
Speaker 1: Frida's hands were fairly small and she had to wrestle
Speaker 1: with that instrument. But Dolly played violin already and Renee
Speaker 1: played the pianos, their father wanted Frida to play a
Speaker 1: different instrument. In nineteen fifteen, when Frida was eleven, her
Speaker 1: sister Dolly died of peritonidis, and Dolly was just fourteen
Speaker 1: at that time. Naturally, as their parents mourned, this put
Speaker 1: a lot of strain on the family, and they really
Speaker 1: didn't speak about their loss very much. Within a year, though,
Speaker 1: Frida's parents divorced, although the two of them had a
Speaker 1: cordial relationship from this point. As a teenager, Frida, according
Speaker 1: to her sister Renee, grew up very fast. Renee also
Speaker 1: noted that her sister was very popular and that both
Speaker 1: boys and girls were crazy about her. Frida was her
Speaker 1: father's favorite child, but when her naughty behavior put her
Speaker 1: in peril of being kicked out of public school, he
Speaker 1: gave her a stern talking to because he could not
Speaker 1: afford a private school as a music teacher, so if
Speaker 1: she got kicked out there were no other options for
Speaker 1: her education. In nineteen twenty three, Frida's father, Aaron, died
Speaker 1: of colon cancer. He had been sick for several years
Speaker 1: and at first he had let his abdominal pain go untreated.
Speaker 1: After an emergency surgery in nineteen twenty, he recovered for
Speaker 1: a time, and during that brief reprieve, he insisted that
Speaker 1: he and Frida give a concert together. That was actually
Speaker 1: her first concert. Yeah, she did not feel ready for it,
Speaker 1: but he kind of pressed the issue and they went
Speaker 1: ahead with it. Frida studied cello, not that much with
Speaker 1: her father, but with a number of other teachers, and
Speaker 1: it was through one of them in nineteen twenty that
Speaker 1: she met a woman named Aureete Bosman's. Frida had been
Speaker 1: at the teacher's house when she met Arie, who was
Speaker 1: romantically involved with the teacher. That teacher was the first
Speaker 1: cellist of the Holland Orchestra, and when Henriette and the
Speaker 1: man had a falling out because he had been cheating
Speaker 1: on her and she feared at the time that she
Speaker 1: was pregnant, Frida was then left alone with Arite and
Speaker 1: told the obviously upset woman that she could tell her everything.
Speaker 1: Frieda and Henriette were soon romantically involved, and they lived
Speaker 1: together for seven years. Henriette was already a well known composer.
Speaker 1: She was in her twenties when the two women met,
Speaker 1: so she was older than the sixteen year old Bill
Speaker 1: and Fonta was. Their relationship wasn't exclusive, though Henriette had
Speaker 1: relationships with men, which Frida said she wasn't jealous of,
Speaker 1: and then Frida later said that their relationship wasn't particularly sexual.
Speaker 1: It seemed to be really founded more than anything else,
Speaker 1: on a very deep emotional bond and on Frida's fulfillment
Speaker 1: in the role of caretaker to the composer. She later
Speaker 1: said of Henriette quote, I loved her for a long time,
Speaker 1: many many years. She was a person who took more
Speaker 1: than she gave, which was fine with me because I
Speaker 1: had an abundance of devotion to give. Henrietta Bozman's second
Speaker 1: Concerto was dedicated to Frida as Aaron Bellnfonta's illness had progressed,
Speaker 1: he had become unable to work, so Frida started working
Speaker 1: in those years between nineteen twenty and nineteen twenty three
Speaker 1: professionally as a cellist with the Holland Orchestra, and she
Speaker 1: and Bozmuns had a wide range of friends who were
Speaker 1: also musicians, and it was through this circle that Freeda
Speaker 1: met a floutist named Johann Feldkamff, who also went by Joe.
Speaker 1: Feldkamff was quite taken with Frida and with her musicianship.
Speaker 1: Initially their story sounds kind of sweet. Frida had always
Speaker 1: been the type to look out for other people, but
Speaker 1: Joe wanted her to have the same benefit in her career.
Speaker 1: But then his affection for her really became obsessive. He
Speaker 1: wanted to get married, and she explained that wasn't really
Speaker 1: for her, and then at one point he brought a
Speaker 1: revolver into the room with him and put up on
Speaker 1: the mantle. Frida asked him, what are you trying to do,
Speaker 1: and he said, quote, I don't want to live without you.
Speaker 1: Her response to him at this point was I'm not
Speaker 1: the marrying type. I don't think that I can love
Speaker 1: a man that way. But he responded, I want to
Speaker 1: be where you are, and so she agreed to the marriage,
Speaker 1: feeling like there was really no other choice in the matter.
Speaker 1: She later told an interviewer, like what was I supposed
Speaker 1: to do when faced with the possibility that this man
Speaker 1: would kill himself or I could marry him, I wasn't
Speaker 1: going to be responsible for that. She's a horrible position
Speaker 1: to put someone in. Surprisingly, in many ways, they initially
Speaker 1: actually appeared to be a fairly happy couple together. They
Speaker 1: were kind of like these two chic musicians, and they
Speaker 1: were both very popular, and Frieda legitimately did like Joe
Speaker 1: as a person, and she enjoyed his company. But she
Speaker 1: also noticed that almost as soon as they got married,
Speaker 1: Joe Joi de vivre seemed to vanish. He had been
Speaker 1: very fun and kind of boisterous and a little bit
Speaker 1: of a trickster, and that all went away, and he
Speaker 1: only grew more withdrawn as time went on. They had
Speaker 1: been married in nineteen thirty one, and they divorced five
Speaker 1: years later in nineteen thirty six, and in the meantime,
Speaker 1: Frida and Henriette had also grown apart. Yeah and Frida
Speaker 1: had married Joe. Henriette was still very much in their lives,
Speaker 1: but she and Frida started drifting apart. Freda speculated that
Speaker 1: Henriette just wasn't able to manage the idea of not
Speaker 1: having Freda entirely to herself, even though the rules were
Speaker 1: different for Henrietta's own additional romances. Frida took a job
Speaker 1: teaching high school music. She had actually not been the
Speaker 1: school's first choice. A friend of hers had been who
Speaker 1: was a man. But after working in the position for
Speaker 1: a brief time, that first choice candidate found that he
Speaker 1: could not handle the kids and he quit, and Frida
Speaker 1: was called and asked if she still wanted the job,
Speaker 1: and she took it. Conducting a high school orchestra actually
Speaker 1: changed everything. She had found her passion in conducting, and
Speaker 1: she also reported that she had no problem handling the kids.
Speaker 1: After the school kids put on a performance that Freda conducted,
Speaker 1: the Amsterdam University quiet asked her to conduct them, and
Speaker 1: she did that. Also. As she kept working with kids,
Speaker 1: they also felt like they wanted to work with her
Speaker 1: even more, and so soon she assembled this amateur orchestra,
Speaker 1: not just with the students that she was teaching, but
Speaker 1: also with adults who were trying to pursue music as
Speaker 1: a hobby. This amateur orchestra put on a concert and
Speaker 1: that was attended by a booking agent who arranged larger performances,
Speaker 1: and that agent approached Belenfonta and said, quote, if you
Speaker 1: can do that with an amateur orchestra, can you imagine
Speaker 1: what you can do with professionals? And Freda balked at
Speaker 1: this idea. She didn't think that any professional musician would
Speaker 1: play for her, and also Amsterdam had actually seen two
Speaker 1: other professional orchestra's form and fall apart in a pretty
Speaker 1: short period of time. But after she was promised bookings,
Speaker 1: if she could just get a successful professional concert together, Frida,
Speaker 1: always up for the challenge, did exactly that. She had
Speaker 1: her attractors with this. Even among her close friends, there
Speaker 1: were concerns that she would kill her career as a
Speaker 1: cellist if she tried to become a conductor as a woman.
Speaker 1: Her best friend pointed out that she had never been
Speaker 1: trained as a conductor, and Freeda responded quote, I have
Speaker 1: had my eyes and ears open. I think I can
Speaker 1: do it. Freda's Klina Orchestra, her little orchestra, got good reviews,
Speaker 1: and so in nineteen thirty eight she had become a
Speaker 1: professional conductor. And coming up, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the next phase of Frida's life, which unfortunately detoured away
Speaker 1: from music by necessity, but first, we're going to pause
Speaker 1: for a word from one of our sponsors. In nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, Frida took a drive to Switzerland, and she
Speaker 1: was going there to take a series of lessons in
Speaker 1: conducting that ended with the twelve yearrolled students in the
Speaker 1: program competing as their final exam, and the winner of
Speaker 1: that competition would get to conduct a professional Swiss orchestra.
Speaker 1: Frida was the top student and she won. She never
Speaker 1: got to claim her prize because World War II put
Speaker 1: an end to her conducting. German troops occupied Holland on
Speaker 1: May tenth. Frida's brother, Robert, who was a doctor, went
Speaker 1: silent after this invasion, and with no communication from him,
Speaker 1: the family understandably became very concerned. It turned out that
Speaker 1: Robert and his wife had died by suicide. The family
Speaker 1: found out when a stranger told them Robert had left
Speaker 1: his mother a note explaining that they had made the
Speaker 1: choice to die rather than to live in the world
Speaker 1: as it was. Frida said in an interview late in
Speaker 1: her life that if she had been there, she would
Speaker 1: have told her brother that the world hadn't changed quote.
Speaker 1: The bad part just came too close, and while the
Speaker 1: family reeled understandably, Frida was pretty quick to tell them
Speaker 1: that she was not ever going to handle things the
Speaker 1: way that her brother had, but that she was going
Speaker 1: to resist. She told her sister Renee quote, if the
Speaker 1: Germans catch me, they can chop me into little pieces
Speaker 1: if they want, but I'm fighting. As part of the occupation,
Speaker 1: all artists required to join the National Socialist Culture Chamber,
Speaker 1: but Jews were forbidden to join. The orchestra that Frieda
Speaker 1: was conducting had a lot of Jewish musicians in it,
Speaker 1: so she gathered them together and said, boys, there's no orchestra.
Speaker 1: We have never existed. She preferred to give up her
Speaker 1: dream job as a conductor than to risk the safety
Speaker 1: of her musicians. They weren't working artists in an orchestra,
Speaker 1: they weren't artists by professions, so she could hopefully avoid
Speaker 1: registration in the Culture Chamber that would have had to
Speaker 1: identify which of the members were Jewish. Playing music written
Speaker 1: by Jewish composers was also forbidden, and then Jewish musicians
Speaker 1: were forced out of music schools and conservatories and orchestras,
Speaker 1: which was what Frieda had foreseen. Yeah, she was very
Speaker 1: quick to see the path that lay ahead of them.
Speaker 1: Faster than a lot of other people because there were
Speaker 1: other people in the music scene. They were like, no,
Speaker 1: we can all just register. It'll be fine. We just
Speaker 1: had to register, and she's like, nope, this is how
Speaker 1: it starts, and that culture chamber had existed before the
Speaker 1: occupation but became a mandatory thing. She later spoke about
Speaker 1: her shift in focus during this time by saying, quote,
Speaker 1: I completely disappeared from the musical life and immediately started
Speaker 1: to prepare myself to do other things that needed doing.
Speaker 1: In October nineteen forty a law requiring identification to be
Speaker 1: carried at all times was enacted. Jews had a jay
Speaker 1: stamped on their papers, and this is when Frida started
Speaker 1: forging papers. This was actually not her first time forging documents.
Speaker 1: When she was much younger, she had forged papers for
Speaker 1: a close friend who was Russian to get back into
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union to meet up with her betrothed. Freda
Speaker 1: learned to carefully switch out parts of the documents to
Speaker 1: create new ones. By May of nineteen forty one, there
Speaker 1: were no Jews left in the Amsterdam music community. Freda
Speaker 1: had started distributing forged passports from her home and she
Speaker 1: helped a lot of people flee and then as time
Speaker 1: went on, her methods became more and more refined, and
Speaker 1: she was able to print entire fake identification. Yeah, prior
Speaker 1: to that, they had kind of been cutting and pasting,
Speaker 1: you know, cutting apart some identification and making new ones,
Speaker 1: but they basically had a whole system going on by
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one. But all of this defiance and all
Speaker 1: of her work in the resistance eventually caught up with Frieda.
Speaker 1: After a passport pick up appointment was missed by a
Speaker 1: couple that she had agreed to give forged documents, she
Speaker 1: wanted to check on them. They lived in her neighborhood
Speaker 1: and she knew who they were, and when she went
Speaker 1: to their home, the Gestapo was waiting and Frida was arrested.
Speaker 1: She purposely talked to this officer who had taken her
Speaker 1: into custody, like she didn't know what he was talking about.
Speaker 1: She asked him to explain the laws around who was
Speaker 1: and wasn't considered Jewish. For example, Frida's father, as we
Speaker 1: explained earlier, was Jewish, but her mother wasn't. So Frieda
Speaker 1: wasn't considered Jewish, but her brother, who had married a
Speaker 1: Jewish woman was considered Jewish. She peppered the officer with
Speaker 1: all these questions, asking him to explain all the rules
Speaker 1: about who could and couldn't interact with each other. She
Speaker 1: claimed to just not understand any of them. She acted
Speaker 1: very innocent and confused by the whole situation until he
Speaker 1: got so tired of trying to answer her questions that
Speaker 1: he pulled the car over and told her to get
Speaker 1: out and go home. In nineteen forty two, Frida performed
Speaker 1: her last concert as a conductor in Amsterdam. This was
Speaker 1: held in a Jewish community center and it was performed
Speaker 1: by a mix of Jewish and non Jewish students, and
Speaker 1: this was really a huge act of defiance on Frida's part,
Speaker 1: as she was not legally allowed to conduct Jewish musicians.
Speaker 1: During all of this, one of Frida's best friends, Ellen Schwartz,
Speaker 1: trusted the wrong people who had promised to get Ellen
Speaker 1: and her Jewish husband out of Amsterdam for a price,
Speaker 1: but it turned out this whole thing was a scam.
Speaker 1: The couple was taken instead to a concentration camp. Knowing
Speaker 1: that her friends had been betrayed in this way and
Speaker 1: sent to be murdered. Infuriated, Freda for the rest of
Speaker 1: her life. She would later say quote that is so low,
Speaker 1: so far down in the depths of evil, that I
Speaker 1: hate to talk talk about it. I hate to think
Speaker 1: about it myself. Frieda realized that she and some of
Speaker 1: her colleagues in the resistance could keep forging documents, but
Speaker 1: the problem was that there couldn't be duplicate documents in
Speaker 1: City Hall. The IDs were all enumerated, and that number
Speaker 1: series made it easier to check for fake ID So
Speaker 1: she decided that the solution was to destroy the files
Speaker 1: in City Hall. And the logic was that if one
Speaker 1: duplicate was discovered and identified as fake, it would make
Speaker 1: clear to German authorities that there were a lot of
Speaker 1: fakes probably in circulation, and it would up the chances
Speaker 1: of people getting caught and of course all of the
Speaker 1: horrible ramifications of that. So in March of nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: the Dutch Resistance made their move to resolve this. They
Speaker 1: attacked City Hall and destroyed the ID records. This was
Speaker 1: really no small feat. The building was guarded. Freda's team
Speaker 1: did all kinds of research to find out how the
Speaker 1: whole operation worked, including the names of all the guards
Speaker 1: and the shifts schedules. They also had a tailor make
Speaker 1: two replica police uniforms to pull off the mission. They
Speaker 1: found a leak on the police force who could give
Speaker 1: them details, and then Frieda watched the whole thing from
Speaker 1: a nearby roof. But even though they were able to
Speaker 1: set fire at City Hall and that plan ultimately was
Speaker 1: a success in destroying records, there was fallout because someone
Speaker 1: betrayed the group. Because of all of the preparation and
Speaker 1: information gathering that had been involved, there were just too
Speaker 1: many people who had been talked to, and thus too
Speaker 1: many people who knew about it, So everyone had to
Speaker 1: go into hiding, and Freda learned of her co conspirators
Speaker 1: being arrested one by one and sentenced to death for
Speaker 1: their part in the attack. One man, in particular, Rudolph
Speaker 1: Rudy Bloomgarten, had been Frida's right hand man in planning
Speaker 1: the sabotage, and his death in particular was an especially
Speaker 1: hard blow. After the destruction of the population register at
Speaker 1: City Hall, the Germans were really intent on capturing all
Speaker 1: of the conspirators, but Frieda was always determined to keep going.
Speaker 1: She stayed on the move. She never stayed in one
Speaker 1: place for too long. She also disguised herself as a man,
Speaker 1: pitching her voice lower to complete this illusion whenever she
Speaker 1: tried to move around in the open. Frida had some
Speaker 1: wealthy contexts, partly through her career in the arts and
Speaker 1: partly through family connections, and so that offered her an
Speaker 1: avenue to secure additional funding for the Resistance as things
Speaker 1: got more and more difficult and times got leaner. One
Speaker 1: of the things that she talked about later in her
Speaker 1: life was that she went to the head of the
Speaker 1: Heineken family, who was running their successful beer business, to
Speaker 1: ask for help, and this was a huge risk. She
Speaker 1: didn't know for certain if he was sympathetic to the Resistance.
Speaker 1: She talked a lot over the years about how she
Speaker 1: felt like she got really really good at being able
Speaker 1: to read a person just by looking in their eyes,
Speaker 1: and in this case her instinct had been correct. He
Speaker 1: was sympathetic. But still there were obstacles. So the Germans
Speaker 1: were tracking the company's finances, checking to see where all
Speaker 1: the money came from into the business and how that
Speaker 1: money was being spent. So finally he asked Freda, do
Speaker 1: you have an idea? And she actually did. She said,
Speaker 1: by my cello, they're pretty costly, you know. So they
Speaker 1: were able to have this completely above board transaction where
Speaker 1: she gave him her cello in exchange for the money
Speaker 1: that the resistance needed. She also got that cello back
Speaker 1: when the war ended with no problems whatsoever. Even as
Speaker 1: her efforts were leading to really meaningful actions and successes
Speaker 1: for the Dutch Resistance, Freda also recognized that she was
Speaker 1: soon going to run out of luck. She also knew
Speaker 1: that anyone that was even suspected of an association with
Speaker 1: her would be in danger. To further complicate matters, while
Speaker 1: lifting a heavy iron bed that concealed a trapdoor in
Speaker 1: one of the houses that she sheltered in, Freda got
Speaker 1: a hernia and needed to have it operated on, which
Speaker 1: just made all of this very delicate time of being
Speaker 1: nearly discovered all the time even more complicated. She used
Speaker 1: a false name, and she went to a doctor that
Speaker 1: had been recommended that she later described as being quote
Speaker 1: on the right side. But fewer than ten days after
Speaker 1: the surgery, the plan for her to flee had to
Speaker 1: be put into motion. It was time for her to move,
Speaker 1: and she did. She was supposed to go from Brussels
Speaker 1: to Paris to Switzerland and her escape. And this was
Speaker 1: not an easy trip. This was in winter, a lot
Speaker 1: was on foot. She had to follow contacts at various
Speaker 1: points who couldn't actually acknowledge her. So there was this
Speaker 1: just a lot of guesswork and risk in the whole plan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was one section where she's describing this plan where
Speaker 1: she said she had to go to a train station
Speaker 1: wait for two men to get off the train. They
Speaker 1: wouldn't look at her, but they would go off in
Speaker 1: a direction and she would have to follow them. But
Speaker 1: I was just singing, this could be any two dudes
Speaker 1: that get off a train. She doesn't know necessarily that
Speaker 1: she's following the right men. Like, every single step of
Speaker 1: this had huge question marks around it. And by the
Speaker 1: time Frida reached Brussels, the planned Brussels Paris Switzerland path
Speaker 1: of moving refugees out of the Netherlands had been discovered
Speaker 1: by the Nazis and it was no longer useful, so
Speaker 1: Freda traveled instead to Lele, France, where she had the
Speaker 1: contact information for another safe house. When she got there, though,
Speaker 1: there was a huge and terrifying coincidence that same Gestapo
Speaker 1: officer that she had duped in Amsterdam by pretending she
Speaker 1: didn't know all the laws. That was the very same
Speaker 1: person who opened the door of this safe house and
Speaker 1: told her to enter. She put it very plainly when
Speaker 1: she was telling this story later, quote, I ran for
Speaker 1: my life. She ran into a nearby store and hid there.
Speaker 1: Once she was convinced that the coast was clear, she
Speaker 1: left and she made her way to Paris. After several
Speaker 1: weeks in Paris, she traveled with a contact in the
Speaker 1: resistance she had made there named Tony, to the Swiss border,
Speaker 1: and this was in February of nineteen forty four. Tony
Speaker 1: was pretty open with her that he was fearful because
Speaker 1: he looked obviously Jewish and he thought he might put
Speaker 1: her in jeopardy as a consequence, But she responded to
Speaker 1: his concern with quote Tony, by the time they see us,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter whether you look Jewish or not. And
Speaker 1: when they reached the Swiss border, despite being unable to swim,
Speaker 1: she and Tony had to cross a river carrying their
Speaker 1: clothes over their heads. And then when they got to
Speaker 1: the Swiss side of the river and regrouped, they realized
Speaker 1: that they were at the base of a steep mountain
Speaker 1: that there was no way they were going to be
Speaker 1: able to climb, and so they didn't have anywhere to hide.
Speaker 1: They had to walk along the river with no cover.
Speaker 1: Their long walk through the snow was though, in Frida's
Speaker 1: own words, gorgeous, and it was something she never forgot.
Speaker 1: But they were discovered when they stopped at an end
Speaker 1: to try to call the Dutch consulate. They were arrested
Speaker 1: by Swiss border police and taken once again on foot
Speaker 1: to chow Defont to be imprisoned. Frieda gave a Swiss
Speaker 1: reference to prove that she was Dutch and that checked out,
Speaker 1: but Tony, on the other hand, was sent back into
Speaker 1: the cold on the French side of the border. When
Speaker 1: she was asked if she and Tony were a couple,
Speaker 1: Frida answered truthfully that they were just friends, and she
Speaker 1: realized only later that if she had just lied and
Speaker 1: said that they were together, that she might have saved him.
Speaker 1: Frida was moved to a Dutch refugee hotel camp, and
Speaker 1: this was actually a very diffulticult time for her. She
Speaker 1: didn't really have any sense of connection or camaraderie with
Speaker 1: her fellow refugees. Some of them gossiped about her, largely
Speaker 1: around speculation about whether she was a lesbian, and she
Speaker 1: felt like a complete outsider. She later said that she
Speaker 1: felt dead inside when she was there with the other
Speaker 1: refugees at Montreux, and thought that she would never be
Speaker 1: able to make music again. When the war ended, Freda
Speaker 1: returned to Amsterdam. She went by convoy in a journey
Speaker 1: that she described as misery. When she got there, she
Speaker 1: found that her apartment had been sealed up by the Gestapo,
Speaker 1: but everything inside it was as she had left it.
Speaker 1: As the city of Amsterdam tried to resume a life
Speaker 1: that was something like normal, there was really a lot
Speaker 1: of difficulty and strife. Because there were a lot of
Speaker 1: people who had worked with the Germans and were still
Speaker 1: part of the city, they seemed to face no repercussions.
Speaker 1: The conductor Edward von Binen was one such person, and
Speaker 1: he went right back to work free. To describe seeing
Speaker 1: the people who had collaborated with the Germans in such
Speaker 1: good standing in the city as quote a very cold shower.
Speaker 1: Frida Belinfanta made a significant change in her life after
Speaker 1: the war, and we're going to talk about that. Right
Speaker 1: after we take a quick sponsor break. Frida understandably did
Speaker 1: not really feel like herself after the war ended and
Speaker 1: she returned to her home. She described this period as
Speaker 1: a time when she felt no joy and she didn't
Speaker 1: want to build anything, and for a woman who had
Speaker 1: been so driven all of her life, this was a
Speaker 1: very sharp contrast, and as time went on, she knew
Speaker 1: that she just she needed a change. So in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty seven, she decided to make her way to New York,
Speaker 1: which she did with the help of a sponsor, but
Speaker 1: when she got there, she found she didn't really like
Speaker 1: New York all that much. She had tried to make
Speaker 1: connections to get a job as a cellist, but after
Speaker 1: an agent told her that the cellis she already represented
Speaker 1: couldn't get enough work, that woman then asked Frida what
Speaker 1: else she could do, and Belinfante offered up a headshot
Speaker 1: that listed her as a conductor, and the agent said,
Speaker 1: that's worse, and so Freda said goodbye and she left
Speaker 1: the office. After that, she decided to travel the United
Speaker 1: States and to see where felt like the right place
Speaker 1: to make a new home. She was staying with the
Speaker 1: sister of one of her friends from school. This was
Speaker 1: a woman named Minnie. Minnie bought a little car and
Speaker 1: took some vacation time, and the two of them set
Speaker 1: out to see the United States together. Frida found these
Speaker 1: travels incredibly refreshing and restorative. As they traveled, no one
Speaker 1: knew who she was or what she had been through,
Speaker 1: so she didn't feel the oppressive shadow of the war
Speaker 1: in the same way that she had back in Europe.
Speaker 1: When Freda and Minnie got to California, Minnie sold freed
Speaker 1: to the car. This was a crossley that Freda described
Speaker 1: as being like a sewing machine. Many went back to
Speaker 1: New York, and Freda stayed with a friend that she
Speaker 1: had made when she was crossing over from Europe. This
Speaker 1: was a woman named Ivy Fraser. Freda and Ivy bought
Speaker 1: a house together, and, similarly to her relationship with Henriette Beauseman,
Speaker 1: she said that her relationship with Ivy was quote low
Speaker 1: gear sexually, but the two of them were very close.
Speaker 1: Frida worked for a while at a university as an
Speaker 1: assistant conductor and a music teacher, but soon she realized
Speaker 1: she could make better money playing for movie studio orchestras,
Speaker 1: and during this time, while she was taking a lot
Speaker 1: of freelance work. Someone recognized her name and asked if
Speaker 1: she was related to the famous woman conductor from Amsterdam.
Speaker 1: When she told him no, she was not a relative.
Speaker 1: She was that woman conductor. He was at first incredulous
Speaker 1: because she was taking these little, piecemeal, cheap jobs in
Speaker 1: Hollywood and it just didn't match up in his head.
Speaker 1: Then he offered Freda the chance to conduct again, although
Speaker 1: he was clear that it would not be for pay.
Speaker 1: She didn't entirely believe him. But then he told her
Speaker 1: that there were a lot of musicians in Hollywood who
Speaker 1: were making a living playing fully and doing accent sound
Speaker 1: for film, but they never got to play in concert.
Speaker 1: And he said that he could pull an orchestra together
Speaker 1: from these folks, and he was true to his word.
Speaker 1: He put together an orchestra and they all met for
Speaker 1: the first time in the Highland Avenue High School auditorium.
Speaker 1: And just as Frida had found her passion for conducting
Speaker 1: in a high school initially, that spark was reignited in
Speaker 1: another high school, this time in Los Angeles. And when
Speaker 1: the first session ended with these new musicians, Freda asked
Speaker 1: all of them if they would like to come back
Speaker 1: the next week, and they all said yes. Soon their
Speaker 1: little orchestra was booked at the Redlands ball in Redlands, California.
Speaker 1: Freda called it quote the most poetical concert that I remember.
Speaker 1: She gave twelve curtain calls. After this triumph, people in
Speaker 1: Orange County started asking why they didn't have events like
Speaker 1: this one that had hosted Frida and her orchestra, and
Speaker 1: that was the catalyst for the formation of the Orange
Speaker 1: County Philharmonic, which named Frida Belinfante, who was fifty at
Speaker 1: the time, as conductor. She was the first woman principal
Speaker 1: conductor of a professional symphony orchestra, and by her account,
Speaker 1: she initiated every program that they ever had. She also
Speaker 1: had to educate the community about music, and one year
Speaker 1: she gave seventy five speeches trying to do so to
Speaker 1: drum up support for the orchestra. They had really rave
Speaker 1: reviews and well attended shows, but when Frida's first five
Speaker 1: year contract was up, she was told it was not
Speaker 1: going to be renewed and that the symphony was being disbanded.
Speaker 1: There are different versions of exactly how things played out.
Speaker 1: Freda believe that gossip about her lesbianism was part of it.
Speaker 1: She said of this time, quote, I've always been approached
Speaker 1: by the women. I never had to go after anyone
Speaker 1: because they were always after me. I was plagued by
Speaker 1: it in Orange County. These people I didn't ask for.
Speaker 1: I wasn't after people. They were after me all the time.
Speaker 1: But then, of course when I didn't follow through, they
Speaker 1: became nasty. Arts advocate and Orange County Philharmonic founder Elaine
Speaker 1: Redfield told a different version of the story, one that
Speaker 1: had more to do with community politics in the arts
Speaker 1: in the Los Angeles area. She said in a documentary
Speaker 1: interview years later that the director of the La Philharmonic
Speaker 1: had been threatened by the Orange County Philharmonic and that
Speaker 1: he had simply used his influence to push the OCP
Speaker 1: out of existence. This was the time with a lot
Speaker 1: of changes for Freda. In addition to her job in
Speaker 1: Orange County ending, she also split up with Ivy Fraser
Speaker 1: and the house that they bought together was sold. Frida
Speaker 1: moved into her own place in Laguna Beach. Freda gave
Speaker 1: her last concert as a conductor in the late eighties
Speaker 1: in Laguna Beach, and soon after that it became apparent
Speaker 1: that her hearing was failing. She started to think that
Speaker 1: the musicians were playing out of tune, specifically the strings,
Speaker 1: but it was actually her hearing that had changed, and
Speaker 1: that was a painful realization for someone who so deeply
Speaker 1: loved music. Frida and her partner at the time, Bobby Chambers,
Speaker 1: moved to Santa Fe when Frida retired from conducting, but
Speaker 1: then she was diagnosed with cancer not long after that,
Speaker 1: and that coshed Frida's plan for a languid and quiet retirement.
Speaker 1: On May thirty first, nineteen ninety four, at the age
Speaker 1: of ninety, Freda gave a long form interview to Klaus
Speaker 1: Mueller for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and in
Speaker 1: that interview she told her entire life story. That interview
Speaker 1: was a significant part of the research for this episode,
Speaker 1: and you can see videos of it online as well
Speaker 1: as read a full transcript, and we're going to link
Speaker 1: to that in the show notes. A few days before
Speaker 1: her death, Freda told Bobby that she had a beautiful
Speaker 1: dream that she was in a pool and that people
Speaker 1: from all the various times of her life got into
Speaker 1: the pool and came to her and told her good job.
Speaker 1: Frida Belanfanta died nine months after her interview for the
Speaker 1: Holocaust Museum, and after her death, Elaine Redfield said of
Speaker 1: her quote, she was an excellent conductor by any standard,
Speaker 1: but the world wasn't ready at that point in time
Speaker 1: for a lady conductor. It was a shame. She was
Speaker 1: enormously able. Eric Volmer, former Orange County Philharmonic Society executive director,
Speaker 1: said of Freda quote, she was really a trailblazer in
Speaker 1: the arts for Orange County. She was feisty, indefatigable, single minded,
Speaker 1: but more than anything, she really cared about music and
Speaker 1: she wanted to share the art with a broad based community.
Speaker 1: Freda was a very quotable woman. If you watch those
Speaker 1: videos of her read that transcript, you realize she whipped
Speaker 1: out a lot of zingers. Not only was she a
Speaker 1: resistance fighter and a top notch musician, she also had
Speaker 1: a way of seeing the world with great personal confidence
Speaker 1: and clarity about her position in it. As an illustrative example,
Speaker 1: I wanted to close out with a quote of hers
Speaker 1: that I absolutely love. She said, quote, if people have
Speaker 1: a conceived idea why they don't want to have anything
Speaker 1: to do with me, I'm not inquiring of trying to
Speaker 1: find out why, because if people don't want to have
Speaker 1: anything to do with me, then it's not my kind
Speaker 1: of people. I love her so much. Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty great. I found myself just down a rabbit hole
Speaker 1: of like gazing at her and watching her do interviews.
Speaker 1: And there are some great clips in a documentary that
Speaker 1: was made about her in the late nineties where you
Speaker 1: see her teaching music and realize just how she can
Speaker 1: be so straightforward and blunt with people but also very
Speaker 1: warm and encouraging at the same time, and like, it's
Speaker 1: just it's beautiful. Thanks so much for joining us on
Speaker 1: this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive,
Speaker 1: if you heard an email address or a Facebook RL
Speaker 1: or something similar over the course of the show, that
Speaker 1: could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History
Speaker 1: Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can find us all
Speaker 1: over social media at missed Inhistory, and you can subscribe
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