Street art mural created by HYER , depicting the story of Simon Gronowski, unveiled today in the presence of Simon Gronowski in the Garden of Remembrance, the school garden of the S2J School Center in Liège, Belgium, Saturday, May 17, 2025 • #mural #Simon #Gronowski #HYER #school #Liège #S2J #street #art #fresco
Citation info : Simon’s Mural • Michel van der Burg • Miracles•Media • @1MEMO 20250517 • TakeNode 8ec45194-57c9-42a1-a8d1-896b590be098
Nelly Quintart – spelled as Quintard – engraved on the Wall of Honor , Belgium 1999 section, in the Garden of Righteous at Yad Vashem .
Yad Vashem recognized Nelly as Righteous Among the Nations on December 30, 1998, and honored her posthumously in 1999 with the Righteous title and medal.
Background
Belgian Resistance fighter Nelly Quintart has been hiding the Jewish Frankenthal family — Esther, Adolphe, and daughter Sally Frankenthal — at her place, 13 Rue Marie-Thérèse in Brussels, from September 1942 until the liberation in 1944.
Sally Frankenthal recommended to Yad Vashem in the late 1990s the ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ medal for ‘Nelly Quintard’, which Nelly received posthumously in 1999. The surname ‘Quintart’ was misspelled as ‘Quintard’ in Sally’s correspondence with Yad Vashem.
Almost certainly, three Jewish people have been recognized in the unique Westerbork film from 1944 (1). This time it concerns the 9-year-old boy Israël Wijnschenk, his father Max Wijnschenk, and his grandmother Betje Kokernoot-van Furth, who all lived in Utrecht (Holland).
Last week, the Dutch public broadcaster NOS (2) reported the news from the Utrecht (Dutch) news site Nieuws030 (3) that it is very likely that three people were recognized again in this film made by the Jewish prisoner and filmmaker Rudolf Breslauer showing the deportation of Jews, Roma and Sinti by train in Camp Westerbork on May 19, 1944.
Image researcher Koen Hulsbos — who previously identified an Amsterdam couple in this deportation train (4) — thought he recognized the young Israël Wijnschenk, a pupil at the time of the Joodse (Jewish) School Utrecht, and presented this to Victor Frederik, researcher of the Joodse School (5,6). The boy, the man, and the woman seem to belong together, and were recognized from family photos, also by family members.
It is certain that Max and his wife Chel (not in the images) returned to Utrecht after the war, their children Israël and his sister Kitty were murdered. Grandma Betje was also gassed in Auschwitz.
A portrait of Israël Wijnschenk is shown at the site of Joods Monument (7).
According to the transport list, there were two other children in that wagon, Joseph Beugeltas (11 years old) and Manfred Studzinsky (7 years old). Joseph Beugeltas appeared to have blond hair, and could not have been it (6). To be completely sure, the researchers are still looking for a photo of Manfred Studzinsky, for comparison…
Manuscripts (Preprints) and Abstracts copies of the presentations at the IPITA 1997 meeting in Milan (Italy).
1) Van der Burg MPM, Basir I, Zwaan RP, Bouwman E. Porcine islet preservation during isolation in University of Wisconsin solution. Transplant Proc. 1998 Mar;30(2):360-1. doi: 10.1016/s0041-1345(97)01307-9. PMID: 9532079.
PMID_9532079_20250205_1 • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250205_1 • CC BY-NC-ND • TakeNode 406dbe1e-66e3-4edc-acb8-83fdc8ddc5c8
2) Van der Burg MPM, Basir I, Bouwman E. No porcine islet loss during density gradient purification in a novel iodixanol in University of Wisconsin solution. Transplant Proc. 1998 Mar;30(2):362-3. doi: 10.1016/s0041-1345(97)01308-0. PMID: 9532080.
PMID_9532080_20250205_2 • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250205_2 • CC BY-NC-ND • TakeNode c60e0743-946a-4950-b156-7e671593e482
Van der Burg MPM, Basir I, Bouwman E. No porcine islet loss during density gradient purification in a novel iodixanol in University of Wisconsin solution (Abstract). Acta Diabetol 1997; 34: 101.
Van der Burg MPM, Basir I, Zwaan RP, Bouwman E. Porcine islet preservation during isolation in University of Wisconsin solution (Abstract). Acta Diabetol 1997; 34: 136.
1MEMO_ 20250205_3 • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250205_3 • CC BY-NC-ND • TakeNode e5b1c598-fc48-4f2a-93ae-526cd4be082e
Summer 1997, Onno Terpstra, the head of our Surgery Department, asked me to explore our options for starting clinical islet isolation and transplantation in our center – the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), and prepare a roadmap.
September 1997, at the IPITA congress in Milan (1) , I learned from Camillo Ricordi, the scientific director of the Diabetes Research Institute (DRI) in Miami – where many guest collaborators work – that visiting the DRI some weeks might be a good option to gain sufficient first work experience in his clinical islet transplantation group.
December 1997, with a ‘Roadmap’, I got the green light to start the operationalization of clinical islet transplantation in the LUMC, first with a working visit to Miami to study the state of the art ‘Ricordi’ method of human islet isolation, and then start the human islet isolation work in our Surgery lab in Leiden.
In 1990 I had already gained some initial research experience in our Leiden Islet Laboratory with a small number of isolations of islets from human donor organs, using our innovative method of density gradient purification based on the UW solution (2).
During the first three months of 1998 I worked intensively with my student colleague Josephine Rijkelijkhuizen so that she would be able to continue our xenotransplantation research project as independently as possible in our Surgery research team.
April 1998, after participating in the 1st Workshop on Clinical Islet Transplantation in New Orleans (3) – the ideal introduction – a fruitful working visit to the DRI in Miami followed (4,5), with intensive collaboration with the DRI team on, among other things, six human islet isolations, and also the simultaneously (parallel) conducted research into the purification of the human islets in our Iodixanol gradient in UW-Solution (6).
Here a slideshow illustrating this team up with the DRI team in Miami , working on human islet isolation and purification in the innovative Iodixanol-UWS gradient, April-May 1998.
Notes
1) Innovative Islet Purification in Iodixanol-UWS • IPITA 97 • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250128 • TakeNode • URL michelvanderburg.com/2025/01/28/
2) Percoll UWS Purification Pancreatic Islets • ESOT 1991 Talk • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250114 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2025/01/14/
3) Invited participant 1st Workshop on Clinical Islet Transplantation, New Orleans (LA, USA) April 17–19, 1998
4) Working visit April – May 1998 at the “fast track” center of the Diabetes Research Institute (Scientific director Prof. C. Ricordi, MD) of the University of Miami (Miami, FL, USA)
Citation info : Human Islet Isolation • DRI Miami 1998 • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250204 • TakeNode 86e4a319-a769-44d5-8fa5-de2ca90ab63c • URL michelvanderburg.com/2025/02/04/