Wartime heroine was treasured

Helene (Mimi) Hotte Marple: B Amsterdam, February 3, 1912; m (1) 1937 Wim Hotte : (dec 1945) 1s, (2) 1966 Rex Marple; d Nelson, May 12, 2001.

[Article about my dear godmother, by Peter Kitchin and originally published in The Evening Post, Wellington, New Zealand, May 24, 2001]

Helene Marple, an unlikely treasure of New Zealand’s Dutch migrant community, was known for reasons she was reluctant to admit. In a simple ceremony in 1986 in Wellington, Marple was made a Righteous Gentile by the State of Israel.

The title translates poorly in English — the connotations are woofterish if rendered colloquially but it confers on the recipient the grateful thanks of Jewry to non-Jews who made sacrifices for them while the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust and those inflicted by its allies were largely unknown outside the European theatre of war.

Marple’s award was in recognition of sheltering three youngsters in her home in the Dutch village of Garcleren in September 1944. The two youngest were not with her for more than a few weeks, but the eldest, Margot Schwartz, then 19, owed her life to Marple’s intervention. Schwartz was instrumental in having the award bestowed on the resident of Nelson long after Marple had parked war-era sacrifices to one side.

Marple, who New Zealanders would have known as a forthright and sometimes acerbic individualist, had to be prodded into accepting the award. She’d only been doing her bit, she argued. She knew personal tragedy from the inside, however. Once a comfortable housewife married to aircraft industry engineer Wim Hotte, she’d seen him arrested and taken from the wartime home they’d rented in the rural village of
Garderen following the German invasion Holland. Wim Hotte had elected to oppose the occupiers by collecting innocuous items of hardware that could be reassembled as weapons and used against German forces and their Dutch supporters. His mimeographed recipes for their assembly were his undoing. To his wife’s dismay, and doubtless his own, he was betrayed and arrested in 1942. Apart from a prison visit early in his incarceration, it was the last his wife saw of him. Hotte died in horrid circumstances, along with thousands of other political prisoners, in a German concentration camp near Stuttgart in January, 1945.

Marple was devastated to learn of his fate, but she was tough and resourceful. She revealed her strengths when alerted by a knock on the door at night. On her stoop were three children, refugees from a nearby farmhouse that had been torched during a campaign to intimidate and root out Resistance supporters. She took them in without question, although she needed no convincing of the their ancestry.
Such was her resolve to see the youngsters right, Marple was able to rebuff inquiries about their presence and, importantly, the questions of two Germans who burst into her home in search of a Dutch Resistance man. Marple’s blond son and three olive-complexioned guests were eating a meagre supper and singing hastily-rehearsed carols at the time. Marple, part Swiss and fluent in German, convinced the
squad their quarry must have been elsewhere.

The invasion of Normandy in 1944 did little to relieve Holland’s plight. When the allies decided to drive for the Rhine and Germany, German forces in Holland and much of the Low Lands were cut off from escape. Their plundering of the country increased and with it the privations of the civilian population.

Schwartz, who lived in secret with Marple for the remainder of the war, knew about Marple’s privations first-hand, and of the sacrifices she’d made. She never forgot them, and in adult life not only welcomed her to her home in Haifa, Israel, but set about having her saviour’s efforts recognised.

For Marple, however, peacetime in Holland bore no fruit. In common with thousands of her countrymen, the task of rebuilding the country was long and difficult. Like many, she chose to leave. Her application to move to Canada was rebuffed – solo mothers with a son in tow were unacceptable – but she was inspired to choose New Zealand by a Dutch friend, Elisabeth Maas. Marple arrived in New Zealand in 1951.

She moved to Nelson, and took any work she could find. She worked first in a Nelson milk bar, then, less successfully, on a coastal Marlborough sheep station. She was determined, however, to make her own way. She became a door-to-door seller of towels and linen at Tauranga, and then of knitwear in the Nelson district.

Marple took her second husband’s surname in 1966. Long interested in art, she married Nelson College art teacher Rex Marple three months after beginning lessons under his tutelage. Her works are in private collections, and in Nelson’s Suter Gallery. She donated the proceeds of her last show to the gallery.

In recent years, she became interested in Zen Buddhism. Its tenets and practitioners provided a means for her to cope with pancreatic cancer. Marple organised her own farewells. They were attended by her wide circle of friends. The last of them was also attended by Rabbi Michael Abraham of Wellington.

By Peter Kitchin. Sources: N Clemerson, P Hotte, M Northcroft.

Note: My decision to republish this obituary is personal; Mimi significantly shaped my life. She stepped in as my au pair in Brussels right after I was born, a role she embraced after her son Paul, a friend of my mother’s, mentioned our need. Despite being 60, Mimi offered her help while she was traveling in Europe.

Later, when our family resettled in Wellington, Mimi, living in Nelson, became my godmother. Her visits were frequent, thanks to my paternal grandparents also residing in Nelson. My childhood memories are peppered with solo trips to visit her, her home a gallery of her artwork and global finds—a testament to her adventurous spirit.

Our relationship was fortified through regular letters, postcards, and phone calls, her Dutch accent warmly wrapping my name, “Neek-o-las.” An unforgettable adventure was our trip to New Caledonia in my early 20s, a destination she had long wished to explore.

The news of her impending death found me in San Francisco; I was on a flight home within 48 hours. Those last days were spent reminiscing by her side at the house of her friends who were taking care of her during those final days. Paul and I also wandered through her house, taking her up on her offer to select one or two pieces of her art that meant something special to each of us.

Mimi’s resilience, creativity, and love for life have left an indelible mark on me and many others. Her legacy is one of inspiration and enduring affection.