W.S.H. Elte

Willem Salomon Hijman (“Puck”) Elte was born in Den Helder. In the fall of 1917, he came to Zaandam to teach physics and chemistry at the HBS and from 1918 also at the Gemeentelijk Lyceum.^[1] He married Rassa Riwlin in 1928 in Jerusalem. She died in 1931 in Amsterdam. Elte went on to marry Esther van Zon in 1935.^[2] In 1941 David Cohen recommended him as headmaster of the new Jewish Lyceum in Amsterdam. He got the appointment.^[3] As headmaster, Elte demanded discipline and civility, but he cautioned the teachers against giving the pupils too much homework, because of the unusual circumstances in which they found themselves.^[4]

Headmaster Elte asked the alderman of education to give the pupils permission to come into the school building several days a week during the summer holidays so they could meet up to play chess, volleyball and table tennis. They were after all not permitted to leave the city or play sports outside. The alderman did not object to the initiative.^[5]

At the end of the first school year, the Jewish Lyceum organised a public graduaton ceremony, which was customary for grammar schools and high schools. On 1 June 1942 Elte asked the alderman of education to permit the ceremony to take place on 3 July 1942 at the Jewish Theatre, which had made itself available for the occasion.^[6] The alderman made it known that he had no objection.^[7]

Because of his position, he was granted a Sperre, a temporary reprieve from deportation, but on 29 September 1943, the remaining two thousand Amsterdam Jews not in hiding were rounded up, including the rector of the Jewish Lyceum Willem Elte, and deported to Westerbork.^[8] He and his wife were deported from there to Bergen-Belsen and finally ended up in Tröbitz in April 1945, on one of the evacuation trains, the infamous lost transport. They did not return to the Netherlands until six months later.^[1]

In June 1947 Otto Frank sent Elte a copy of Het Achterhuis, with a letter in which he wrote that Anne and Margot really enjoyed going to his school. Elte replied with a thank-you letter on 30 June 1947. He said that he remembered Anne and Margot well, but about Anne he wrote that she "was a face in the crowd of the lower classes" that he didn’t have so much contact with. About Margot, that she "stood out because of her superb intellect, her style and grace."^[9] 

In 1963 Elte moved to Haifa.^[2] In the mid-sixties he discussed the role of David Cohen and the Jewish Council with Jacques Presser and Lou de Jong. He was convinced of his good intentions.^[10] He died in 1983 at the age of 95. His son Chaim had already immigrated to Israel in the late 1940s, first working as a truck driver in a kibbutz, but he eventually became a professor of Mechanical Engineering at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where he was appointed president in 1985.^[11]

Source personal data ^[12] Addresses: Zaandam; Willemsparkweg 61 bovenhuis, Amsterdam (1934).^[2]