Pim Pimentel

Pim Pimentel was born in Malang, former Dutch East Indies. His father Abraham (Bram) Pimentel (1877-1957) was a major in the KNIL, the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army.^[1] Bram was a descendant of the well-known Portuguese-Jewish Pimentel family and was a brother of Henriëtte Henriquez Pimentel, who during the German occupation, as director of the Jewish crèche in Amsterdam, risked her life to help Jewish children find a hiding place.^[2] When Pim was two years old, the family came to the Netherlands. 

In 1941, Pim was enrolled at the Second HBS secondary school at Roelof Hartstraat 1 in Amsterdam, where he was to start in the first year after the summer holidays.^[3] Because Jewish students and teachers were forbidden to attend regular schools as of 1 September 1941, he had to transfer to the Jewish Lyceum. In school year 1941-'42, he was in class 1L2, which also included Anne Frank​​​​​​. In the school year 1942-'43 he was in class 2B.^[4] Anne writes in her diary that he did everything he was not allowed to.^[5] And on 24 March 1944 she writes: "I have not often had anyone tell me I was pretty , Except for Pim Pimentel who said I looked so attractive when I laughed."^[6] In the short story "Do you remember?' she recalls 'how Pim Pimentel told Rob Cohen in the tram, within earshot of Sanne Ledermann who passed it on to me , that Anne had a much prettier face than Danka Zajde, especially when she smiled. Rob's answer was: 'My, you've got bis nostrils , Pim!'"^[7]

1943 was a decisive year for all members of the Pimentel family, including Bram's. In March 1943, Bram Pimentel, together with his wife and son Pim were deported from their home on Nicolaes Maesstraat to Westerbork. Because they belonged to the so-called Barneveld group of prominent Jews, they ended up in Theresienstadt, where they were safeguarded from further deportation to the extermination camps.^[8] Pim nursed his deathly ill father. He himself contracted tuberculosis and suffered from hunger, but survived the war. Upon returning to Amsterdam, strangers were living in their house. All the furniture and household goods had disappeared.^[9]

After the war, Pim chose to join the army, but he lasted just one year as a midshipman after which he went to study psychology at Leuven University together with Mitonet Rubbens, a member of a well-off Brabant family.^[10] He married her in 1955 and on hat occasion converted to Roman-Catholicism, because, as he claimed, it brought him closer to his Spanish-Portuguese roots. He would also try his all to prove that he was a direct descendant of a Jewish-Portuguese noble family that had fled to the Netherlands during the Inquisition in the 16th century and styled himself the Count D'Henriquez de Pimentel, Duke of Benavente and Mallorca, but the Dutch High Council of Nobility would not accept this.^[11]

Following the maarigae, the couple moved to Groningen, where Pim worked as a psychologist at Groningen University.^[12] In Groningen two children were born, Pollo (film maker)^[13] and Ida. In 1965 the family left for Suriname. Although Pim felt particularly at home there, they returned in 1968. His marriage did not last; the children stayed with their father, who settled in Groningen again. Then he met a concert pianist in Switzerland. He married her three times and divorced her three times as well.^[14]

In the 1980s, he sufferend from the psychological problems of those dealing with violent war experiences. He went into therapy and became both a patient and a therapist. He immersed himself in Judaism, but everywhere he lived he surroonded himself with altars with rosaries, Buddha statues, menorahs and all kinds of other relics. He owned 33 bibles.^[15]

Source personal data.^[16] Address: Nicolaas Maesstraat 99b.^[17]