I worked for Philips from 1987 to 1997. It was a company that took great pride in its history. In 1891, mechanical engineer Gerard Philips (1858–1942) and his father—manufacturer, banker and tobacco and coffee trader—Frederik Philips founded the light bulb factory of the same name in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. In 1991, on its 100th anniversary, a book of its history was issued to all employees. However, because we were expecting a profit share bonus rather than a book, many employees threw the book in the bin, as a silent protest, as did I. Looking back, I am sorry I did so, because later on I discovered that Philips had a fascinating history, especially during World War II.
The well-known hand dynamo from Philips was designed by Ir. L.J. Kalff and patented in January 1942. There were more than a million copies of the standard Pinch Cat Flashlight model made.
The principle of the squeeze cat consists of electromagnetic induction. When a magnet rotates in a coil, an induction current occurs in the coil. This current could then be used to light a light. The voltage was 2.5 Volts at 100 mA/0.1A; with the help of a lens, the light from a 2.5 V light bulb could shine in a targeted manner.
During the occupation, 4 models were produced:
Type 7424, aluminum, silver-colored (see image);
Type 7424/03, aluminum, green;
Type 7426, aluminum, beige (due to a lack of aluminum, brass was later used and zinc was used later);
Type 7426 Bi-Jou (the so-called “ladies model”), aluminum. Mainly produced around 1940-1941. With a retail price of 8.75 guilders, it is considerably more expensive than the standard model.
From February 1943 until 2 June 1944, the standard squeeze cats were manufactured by, among others, the camp residents of Camp Vught, including Jewish employees of Philips (the so-called Philips Kommando).
On 18 October 1935, Frits Philips was appointed vice-director and a member of the board of Philips. Learning of the expected occupation of the Netherlands by Nazi Germany in World War II in 1940, his father Anton Philips, young nephew Frans Otten, and other Philips family members escaped from the Netherlands and fled to the United States, taking company capital with them. Frits Philips stayed in the Netherlands. Together they managed to keep the company alive during the war.
From 30 May until 20 September 1943, Philips was held in the concentration camp Vught because of a strike at the Philips factory.
During the Occupation, Philips saved the lives of 382 Jews by convincing the Nazis that they were indispensable for the production process at Philips. Mr. Philips reportedly tried to hire as many Jews as possible and then told the Nazi occupiers they were irreplaceable, a strategy that prevented many of them from being sent to Auschwitz.
Of the 469 Jews employed at the factory, 382 survived the war, according to company history.
Some historians are critical of Mr Frits Philips, they say he played a double role in the war because its factory production contributed to the German war industry also. However, the fact is that anyone who defied the Nazi regime put their life at risk.
Employees of the Philips Kommando had a hard time in Vught, but slightly better than the other prisoners. For example, every day at four o’clock these prisoners received a hot meal from Philips. This meal came to be known as Philiprak. In addition, they were assured of a dry workplace, without much interference from the guards.
Despite this, Vught was still a concentration camp. Like all other camps, life was harsh, maybe less harsh than in other camps, but harsh nonetheless.
On the night of 15th/ 16th January 1944, 74 female prisoners were detained in a cell after they protested against the interment of a fellow prisoner. This was done under the authority of camp commander Adam Grünewald. The room with a surface of 9 m² had a poor ventilation system, and because of that ten women died of suffocation during the 14 hours of imprisonment. The news of this crime quickly got outside the camp and was extensively reported by the Dutch illegal press. This caused a problem for the Nazi leadership in the Netherlands, who were trying to limit such violent incidents in the camp in order not to fuel the resistance in the Netherlands.
On 4 February 1944, Heinrich Himmler visited Camp Vught and the Philips Kommando following the “bunker drama.”
One of the reasons why a Philips factory was established in Vught was partially because on Sunday morning, 6 December 1942, the British Air Force bombed the Philips factories in Eindhoven. They presumed Philips produced parts for German military equipment. Despite the losses—14 of the 93 aircraft crashed—Operation Oyster was a military success. Large parts of the Philips factories are destroyed. It was a different story for the residents of Eindhoven. Bombs that ended up in the wrong place killed 138 people and damaged many buildings, including a hospital.
Many devices, such as razors, flashlights and paper clips, were made here. The production of “critical” radio tubes started because this enabled young Jewish women to come and work at the “safe” Philips Kommando.
The Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, was the first Japanese diplomat posted to Lithuania, helped a great number of Jews to escape from Lithuania. For that, he received help from The Dutch consul Jan Zwartendijk. He was the director of the Philips plants in Lithuania. On 19 June 1940, he was also a part-time acting consul of the Netherlands. Zwartendijk provided some of the fleeing Jews with documents to travel to Curaçao, a Caribbean island and Dutch colony that required no entry visa, or Suriname, which was also a Dutch colony.
Eppo Gans was a Dutch employee of Philips and, with his brother Gerard, was involved in helping Jewish people in hiding. They were half-Jewish. Gans was arrested on 19 October 1941 and imprisoned in Den Bosch, the Oranjehotel, Camp Vught and from there either to Auschwitz with the so-called Philips Commando or to Sachsenhausen on 3 June or 5 September. He died on 26 February 1945 in Neuengamme.
During the Nazi occupation, Eppo and his older brother Gerard worked as a relief worker for Jewish people in hiding. On 29 October 1941, he was discovered and imprisoned by the SS in the House of Detention in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, where he registered as a Jehovah’s Witness. On 17 February 1942, he was taken to prison at The Hague. Later he was deported to Camp Vught.
Alexander Hornemann, 8, the Netherlands
Eduard Hornemann, 12, the Netherlands
Marek Steinbaum, 10, Poland
Marek James, 6, Poland
W. Junglieb, 12, Yugoslavia
Roman Witonski, 7, Poland
Roman Zeller, 12, Poland
Sergio de Simone, 7, Italy
Georges Andre Kohn, 12, France
Eduard Reichenbaum, 10, Poland
Jacqueline Morgenstern, 12, France
Surcis Goldinger, 11, Poland
Lelka Birnbaum, 12, Poland
Eleonora Witonska, 5, Poland
Ruchla Zylberberg, 10, Poland
H.Wasserman, 8, Poland
Lea Klygerman, 8, Poland
Rywka Herszberg, 7, Poland
Blumel Mekler, 11, Poland
Mania Altman, 5, Poland
Above is the list of 20 children, 10 boys and 10 girls ,aged between 5 and 12 ,who were killed on the night of 20/21 April 1945.They were the children of the Bullenhuser Damm School . They were killed along their minders French doctors, Gabriel Florence and René Quenouille, and two Dutchmen Dirk Deutekom and Anton Hölzel.
The children had been killed for Kurt Heissmeyer to obtain a professorship In order to do this , he had to carry out medical experiments.He injected the children with living tuberculosis bacteria in their veins and directly into their lungs to determine if they had any natural immunity to tuberculosis.
His experiment was carried out on the children at Neuengamme concentration camp. Because of the approaching allied troops the children and their minders were transported to Bullenhuser Damm School, where they were killed. I have written about these children before but looking back at it today I realized how close to it was to me in a personal way.
The picture at the top of the blog is of the 2 brothers Eduard and Alexander Hornemann. Their parents both worked at the Philips factory in Eindhoven,the Netherlands. Their Father ,Philip, died on February 21, 1945 at Sachsenhausen, where he arrived after a stop at Dachau after the ‘death march’. Their mother Elisabeth died of typhus in Auschwitz in October 1944.
I worked for Philips between 1987 and 1997, not in Endhoven but I often had to go there for several training programs as it was the HQ of Philips in the Netherlands. A few decades earlier they would have been my colleagues.
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Operation OYSTER, the daylight attack on the Philips radio and valve works at Emmasingel, Eindhoven, Holland, by No. 2 Group. Low-level oblique photograph showing incendiary bombs dropped by Lockheed Venturas bursting on the roof of the Emmasingel lamp and valve factory. C 3268 Part of AIR MINISTRY SECOND WORLD WAR OFFICIAL COLLECTION No. 21 Squadron RAF
For 10 years I worked for Philips and was not aware of this bit of the company’s history, although I worked in a different plant in another city, the links to Eindhoven were substantial because HQ was located there.
On this day 80 years ago the Philips Radio Works in Eindhoven, in the Netherlands was bombed by the RAF. It was a daring low-level attack which turned out to be a notable success for the allies as it cost the Germans an estimated six months’ loss of production.
On 6th December 1942, the RAF mounted Operation Oyster, a daylight low-level bombing raid on the Philips electronic company in Eindhoven, Holland. It was hoped that this approach would minimise casualties amongst Dutch civilians. It also provided the opportunity to build a well-photographed publicity exercise around the whole raid. The Mosquito was developing quite a reputation for this low-level work, although only a small proportion of the aircraft on the raid was of this type.
Squadron Leader Charles Patterson was one of the more experienced pilots taking part, his observer’s seat was occupied by Flying Officer Jimmy Hill from RAF Film Unit – the footage from this raid can be seen in the video below:
93 aircraft took part in the raid;
47 (PV-1) Venturas Mk. Is of RAF No. 21, RAAF No. 464 and RNZAF No. 487 Squadrons.
36 (A-20) Boston IIIs of Nos. 88, 107, and 226 Squadrons
10 Mosquito Mk. IVs of No.105 and No.139 Squadrons;
83 aircraft dropped bombs and one Mosquito was a photographic aircraft.
Eindhoven is beyond the range of fighter escorts so the raid was flown at a low level and in clear weather conditions.
Operation OYSTER, the daylight attack on the Philips radio and valve works at Eindhoven, Holland, by No. 2 Group. Ground crews prepare De Havilland Mosquito B Mark IV, DK336, of No. 105 Squadron RAF for the raid at Marham, Norfolk. C 3298 Part of AIR MINISTRY SECOND WORLD WAR OFFICIAL COLLECTION RAFFPU
Operation OYSTER, the daylight attack on the Philips radio and valve works at Eindhoven, Holland, by No. 2 Group. Wing Commander H I Edwards VC (left), leader of the De Havilland Mosquito B Mark IVs of Nos. 105 and 139 Squadrons RAF on the raid, and his navigator approach their aircraft before taking off from Marham, Norfolk. C 3304 Part of AIR MINISTRY SECOND WORLD WAR OFFICIAL COLLECTION RAFFPU
Mosquito B Mark IV Series 2, DK338, in flight after completion. DK338 served with No. 105 Squadron RAF as ‘GB-O’, and took part in the successful low-level raid on the Phillips radio factory at Eindhoven, Holland, (Operation OYSTER) on 6 December 1942, led by the Squadron Commander, Wing Commander H.I.Edwards VC. CH 7781 Part of AIR MINISTRY SECOND WORLD WAR OFFICIAL COLLECTION De Havilland photographer for Ministry of Aircraft Production
The bombing had to be very accurate to only cause damage to factories in the complex as the Factories were in the middle of the town. Normally they were also full of Dutch workers under Nazi guard so the raid was carried out on a Sunday to try and reduce civilian casualties. Unfortunately, some bombs fell in nearby streets killing 148 Dutch people and seven German soldiers.
Full production at the factory was not reached again until six months after the raid.
Operation OYSTER, the daylight attack on the Philips radio and valve works at Eindhoven, Holland, by No. 2 Group. Douglas Bostons fly over the burning Emmasingel lamp and valve factory at the height of the raid. The works were so severely hit that full production was not resumed for six months. C 5755 Part of AIR MINISTRY SECOND WORLD WAR OFFICIAL COLLECTION No. 2 Group RAF
Operation OYSTER, the daylight attack on the Philips radio and valve works at Eindhoven, Holland, by No. 2 Group. Low-level photographic-reconnaissance aerial taken over the Stryp Group main plant 30 minutes after the attack, showing extensive damage to the radio assembly shop and fires still burning at several points. Full production of electrical material at the factory was not reached again until 6 months after the raid. The bombers suffered a loss rate of 15 per cent for the whole force. C 3281 Part of AIR MINISTRY SECOND WORLD WAR OFFICIAL COLLECTION No. 139 Squadron RAF
Forgotten may not be the best description for this man, since he has been remembered in fact earlier this year a movie ,with the title”Persona Non Grata” about him was released in the cinema. But a lot of people on the globe,including me; have never heard of this man.
I was tempted to call him the Japanese Schindler but I feel it would not do justice to him.
Although he was part of an evil regime he refused to give up on his humanity and his respect for his fellow man.
Chiune (Sempo) Sugihara, born on January 1, 1900, was the first Japanese diplomat posted to Lithuania. He was born to a middle-class family from Yaotsu, in Japan’s Gifu Prefecture on the main Japanese Island of Honshu, north of Nagoya. Sugihara is sometimes also referred to as “Chiune,” an earlier rendition of the Japanese character for “Sempo,” part of his formal name.
In 1912, he graduated with top honors from Furuwatari Elementary School, and entered Aichi prefectural 5th secondary school (now Zuiryo high school), a combined junior and senior high school. His father wanted him to become a physician, but Chiune deliberately failed the entrance exam by writing only his name on the exam papers. Instead, he entered Waseda University in 1918 and majored in English language. At that time, he entered Yuai Gakusha, the Christian fraternity that had been founded by Baptist pastor Harry Baxter Benninhof, to improve his English. In 1919, he passed the Foreign Ministry Scholarship exam. The Japanese Foreign Ministry recruited him and assigned him to Harbin, China, where he also studied the Russian and German languages and later became an expert on Russian affairs.
When Sugihara served in the Manchurian Foreign Office, he took part in the negotiations with the Soviet Union concerning the Northern Manchurian Railroad.
He quit his post as Deputy Foreign Minister in Manchuria in protest over Japanese mistreatment of the local Chinese. While in Harbin, he got married to Klaudia Semionovna Apollonova. They divorced in 1935, before he returned to Japan, where he married Yukiko Kikuchi, who became Yukiko Sugihara after the marriage; they had four sons (Hiroki, Chiaki, Haruki, Nobuki). Chiune Sugihara also served in the Information Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as a translator for the Japanese legation in Helsinki, Finland.
In 1939, Sugihara became a vice-consul of the Japanese Consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania.
His duties included reporting on Soviet and German troop movements, and to find out if Germany planned an attack on the Soviets and, if so, to report the details of this attack to his superiors in Berlin and Tokyo.
Sugihara had cooperated with Polish intelligence as part of a bigger Japanese–Polish cooperative plan.[As the Soviet Union occupied sovereign Lithuania in 1940, many Jewish refugees from Poland as well as Lithuanian Jews tried to acquire exit visas. Without the visas, it was dangerous to travel, yet it was impossible to find countries willing to issue them. Hundreds of refugees came to the Japanese consulate in Kaunas, trying to get a visa to Japan. At the time, on the brink of the war, Lithuanian Jews made up one third of Lithuania’s urban population and half of the residents of every town as well The Dutch consul Jan Zwartendijk
(Zwartendijk directed the Philips plants in Lithuania. On June 19, 1940, he was also a part-time an acting consul of the Netherlands – or, to be exact, of the Dutch government-in-exile. His superior was the Dutch ambassador to Latvia, De Decker).
had provided some of them with an official third destination to Curaçao, a Caribbean island and Dutch colony that required no entry visa, or Surinam (which was a Dutch colony).
At the time, the Japanese government required that visas be issued only to those who had gone through appropriate immigration procedures and had enough funds. Most of the refugees did not fulfill these criteria. Sugihara dutifully contacted the Japanese Foreign Ministry three times for instructions. Each time, the Ministry responded that anybody granted a visa should have a visa to a third destination to exit Japan, with no exceptions.
In the summer of 1940, when refugees came to him with bogus visas for Curacao and other Dutch caribbean colonies Sugihara decided to facilitate their escape from war-torn Europe. In the absence of clear instructions from Tokyo, he granted 10-day visas for transit through Japan to hundreds of refugees who held Curacao destination visas. Before closing his consulate in the fall of 1940, Sugihara even gave visas to refugees who lacked all travel papers.
Given his inferior post and the culture of the Japanese Foreign Service bureaucracy, this was an unusual act of disobedience. He spoke to Soviet officials who agreed to let the Jews travel through the country via the Trans-Siberian Railway at five times the standard ticket price.
After Sugihara had issued some 1,800 visas, he received a cable from Tokyo reminding him: “You must make sure that they [refugees] have finished their procedure for their entry visas and also they must possess the travel money or the money that they need during their stay in Japan. Otherwise, you should not give them the transit visa.”
In his response to the cable, Sugihara admitted issuing visas to people who had not completed all arrangements for destination visas. He explained the extenuating circumstances: Japan was the only transit country available for those going in the direction of the United States, and his visas were needed for departure from the Soviet Union. Sugihara suggested that travelers who arrived in the Soviet port of Vladivostok with incomplete paperwork should not be allowed to board ship for Japan. Tokyo wrote back that the Soviet Union insisted that Japan honor all visas already issued by its consulates.
Sugihara continued to hand write visas, reportedly spending 18–20 hours a day on them, producing a normal month’s worth of visas each day, until 4 September, when he had to leave his post before the consulate was closed.
By that time he had granted thousands of visas to Jews, many of whom were heads of households and thus permitted to take their families with them. According to witnesses, he was still writing visas while in transit from his hotel and after boarding the train at the Kaunas Railway Station, throwing visas into the crowd of desperate refugees out of the train’s window even as the train pulled out.
In final desperation, blank sheets of paper with only the consulate seal and his signature (that could be later written over into a visa) were hurriedly prepared and flung out from the train. As he prepared to depart, he said, “Please forgive me. I cannot write anymore. I wish you the best.” When he bowed deeply to the people before him, someone exclaimed, “Sugihara. We’ll never forget you. I’ll surely see you again!”
Sugihara himself wondered about official reaction to the thousands of visas he issued. Many years later, he recalled, “No one ever said anything about it. I remember thinking that they probably didn’t realize how many I actually issued.”
By the time Sugihara left Lithuania he had issued visas to 2,140 persons. These visas also covered some 300 others, mostly children. Not everyone who held visas was able to leave Lithuania, however, before the Soviet Union stopped granting exit visas.
The total number of Jews saved by Sugihara is in dispute, estimating about 6,000; family visas—which allowed several people to travel on one visa—were also issued, which would account for the much higher figure. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has estimated that Chiune Sugihara issued transit visas for about 6,000 Jews and that around 40,000 descendants of the Jewish refugees are alive today because of his actions. Polish intelligence produced some false visas. Sugihara’s widow and eldest son estimate that he saved 10,000 Jews from certain death, whereas Boston University professor and author, Hillel Levine, also estimates that he helped “as many as 10,000 people”, but that far fewer people ultimately survived.Indeed, some Jews who received Sugihara visas failed to leave Lithuania in time, were later captured by the Germans who invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, and perished in the Holocaust.
The Diplomatic Record Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has opened to the public two documents concerning Sugihara’s file: the first aforementioned document is a 5 February 1941 diplomatic note from Chiune Sugihara to Japan’s then Foreign Minister Yōsuke Matsuoka in which Sugihara stated he issued 1,500 out of 2,139 transit visas to Jews and Poles; however, another document from the same foreign office file “indicates an additional 3,448 visas were issued in Kaunas for a total of 5,580 visas” which were likely given to Jews desperate to flee Lithuania for safety in Japan or Japanese occupied China.
Many refugees used their visas to travel across the Soviet Union to Vladivostok and then by boat to Kobe, Japan, where there was a Jewish community. Tadeusz Romer, the Polish ambassador in Tokyo, organised help for them.
From August 1940 to November 1941, he had managed to get transit visas in Japan, asylum visas to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Burma, immigration certificates to the British Mandate of Palestine, and immigrant visas to the United States and some Latin American countries for more than two thousand Polish-Lithuanian Jewish refugees, who arrived in Kobe, Japan, and the Shanghai Ghetto, China.
The remaining number of Sugihara survivors stayed in Japan until they were deported to Japanese-held Shanghai, where there was already a large Jewish community that had existed as early as the mid-1930s. Some took the route through Korea directly to Shanghai without passing through Japan. A group of thirty people, all possessing a visa of “Jakub Goldberg”, were bounced back and forth on the open sea for several weeks before finally being allowed to pass through Tsuruga. Most of the around 20,000 Jews survived the Holocaust in the Shanghai ghetto until the Japanese surrender in 1945, three to four months following the collapse of the Third Reich itself.
Sugihara left Lithuania in early September 1940. The Japanese transferred him to Prague in Bohemia and then to Bucharest, Romania, Germany’s ally, where he remained until after the end of the war. During the victorious Soviet army’s march though the Balkans in 1944, the Soviets arrested Sugihara together with other diplomats from enemy nations. Soviet authorities held him and his family, under fairly benign conditions, for the next three years. When Sugihara returned to Japan in 1947, the Foreign Ministry retired him with a small pension as part of a large staff reduction enacted under the American occupation.
Sugihara settled in Fujisawa in Kanagawa prefecture with his wife and 3 sons. To support his family he took a series of menial jobs, at one point selling light bulbs door to door. He suffered a personal tragedy in 1947 when his youngest son, Haruki, died at the age of seven, shortly after their return to Japan.In 1949 they had one more son, Nobuki, who is the last son alive representing the Chiune Sugihara Family, residing in Belgium. He later began to work for an export company as General Manager of U.S. Military Post Exchange. Utilizing his command of the Russian language, Sugihara went on to work and live a low-key existence in the Soviet Union for sixteen years, while his family stayed in Japan.
In 1968, Jehoshua Nishri, an economic attaché to the Israeli Embassy in Tokyo and one of the Sugihara beneficiaries, finally located and contacted him. Nishri had been a Polish teen in the 1940s. The next year Sugihara visited Israel and was greeted by the Israeli government. Sugihara beneficiaries began to lobby for his inclusion in the Yad Vashem memorial.
In 1985, Chiune Sugihara was granted the honor of the Righteous Among the Nations ( by the government of Israel. Sugihara was too ill to travel to Israel, so his wife and youngest son Nobuki accepted the honor on his behalf. Sugihara and his descendants were given perpetual Israeli citizenship.
Sugihara Street in Kaunas and Vilnius, Lithuania, Sugihara Street in Tel Aviv, Israel, and the asteroid 25893 Sugihara are named after him.
The Chiune Sugihara Memorial Museum in the town of Yaotsu (his birthplace), Gifu Prefecture, in central Japan was built by the people of the town in his honor.[
Also, a corner for Sugihara Chiune is set up in the Port of Humanity Tsuruga Museum near Tsuruga Port, the place where many Jewish refugees arrived in Japan, in the city of Tsuruga, Fukui, Japan.
The Sugihara House Museum is in Kaunas, Lithuania. The Conservative synagogue Temple Emeth, in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, has built a “Sugihara Memorial Garden”and holds an Annual Sugihara Memorial Concert.
When Sugihara’s widow Yukiko traveled to Jerusalem in 1998, she was met by tearful survivors who showed her the yellowing visas that her husband had signed. A park in Jerusalem is named after him. The Japanese government honored him on the centennial of his birth in 2000.
A memorial to Sugihara was built in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo in 2002, and dedicated with consuls from Japan, Israel and Lithuania, Los Angeles city officials and Sugihara’s son, Chiaki Sugihara, in attendance. The memorial, entitled “Chiune Sugihara Memorial, Hero of the Holocaust” depicts a life-sized Sugihara seated on a bench, holding a visa in his hand and is accompanied by a quote from the Talmud: “He who saves one life, saves the entire world.”
He was posthumously awarded the Commander’s Cross with the Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta in 2007, and the Commander’s Cross Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland by the President of Poland in 1996Also, in 1993, he was awarded the Life Saving Cross of Lithuania.
He was posthumously awarded the Sakura Award by the Japanese Canadian Cultural Center (JCCC) in Toronto in November 2014.
A truly great hero who proved that in order to save lives you sometimes just have to do what needs to be done without thinking of yourself.
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We all know the name and brand. The company which was started as a family business in 1891 by Gerard and his Father Frederik Philips, who owned a cigar shop and was a first cousin of Karl Marx.
Gerard and his younger brother Anton Philips changed the business to a corporation by founding in 1912 the NV Philips’ Gloeilampenfabrieken. As the first CEO of the Philips corporation, Gerard laid with Anton the base for the later Philips multinational.
Hang on I hear you say this is not forgotten history, these are well known and documented facts(except for the Karl Marx link). And you would be right but the title is ‘Forgotten History-Frits Philips’
Ir. F. Philips voor het Evoluon te Eindhoven
Frederik Jacques “Frits” Philips (16 April 1905 – 5 December 2005) was the fourth chairman of the board of directors of the Dutch electronics company Philips, which his uncle and father founded. For his actions in saving 382 Jews during the Nazi Occupation of the Netherlands in World War II, he was recognized in 1996 by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Among the Nations.
Frits Philips was born in the city of Eindhoven in the south of the Netherlands. The second child, he was the only son of Anton Philips and his wife Anne Henriëtte Elisabeth Maria de Jongh.
Born and raised long before many of the products that would make his company a household name had even been developed, Mr. Philips, who was known as Frits, was a successful businessman who was more interested in the common good than the corporate coffers. Mr. Philips, along with his predecessors at the company, helped build houses for company employees along with sports clubs and cultural institutions.
On 18 October 1935 Frits Philips was appointed vice-director and a member of the board of Philips. Learning of the expected occupation of the Netherlands by Nazi Germany in World War II in 1940, his father Anton Philips, young nephew Frans Otten, and other Philips family members escaped from the Netherlands and fled to the United States, taking company capital with them. Frits Philips stayed in the Netherlands. Together they managed to keep the company alive during the war.
From 30 May until 20 September 1943, Philips was held in the concentration camp Vught because of a strike at the Philips factory.
During the Occupation, Philips saved the lives of 382 Jews by convincing the Nazis that they were indispensable for the production process at Philips.
Mr. Philips reportedly tried to hire as many Jews as possible and then told the Nazi occupiers that they were irreplaceable, a strategy that prevented many of them from being sent to Auschwitz.
Of the 469 Jews employed at the factory, 382 survived the war, according to a company history.
Some historians are critical about Mr Frits Philips ,they say he played a double role in the war because its factory production contributed to the German war industry as well.But the fact is that anyone who defied the Nazi regime put their life at risk.
Between 1961 and 1971 Frits Philips served as President of the company, he was to be the last of the Philips family to be a President of Philips.
It’s funny I worked for Philips for a decade and I never knew about Frits’s involvement in saving the lives of 382 Jewish Philips employees.Nor did I know that there was a Family link with Karl Marx.
1965, he was included in the Dutch royal ranks of Orange Nassau (rank of commander).
1970, he was knighted as Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion.
In his hometown of Eindoven he was simply known as Mr Frits a statue was erected in his honor and a concert hall was named after him.
Yet more proof that one man can make a difference.
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I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
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History of Sorts 
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