Frieda Belinfante 1904 – 1995
A talented cellist educated by her Jewish father, the first female conductor in music history, a lesbian member of the Dutch resistance: The lives of Frieda Belinfante stretch over nine decades of the 20th century.
The film documentary ‘Maar ik was een meisje / But I was a girl…’ is based on my interview in May 1994 with then 90-year-old Frieda Belinfante for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum* as described in this interview. Frieda was born on May 10, 1904 in Amsterdam and died on April 26, 1995 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Research made possible by Frieda’s detailed testimony unearthed additional material on her lives in Europe and the United States that allowed us to develop this film documentary.
‘But I was a girl’ tells the extraordinary story of Dutch Frieda Belinfante, a lesbian who became the first female conductor in prewar Amsterdam, but retreated from a promising musical career after the German invasion of the Netherlands. Instead she dissolved her orchestra and went underground. At first Frieda was working alone falsifying ID cards for Jews in hiding, later with gay writer Willem Arondeus. Both participated in the preparations of one of the most daring acts of the Dutch resistance, the attack on the Amsterdam population registry in 1943. Frieda Belinfante survived as one of the few members of the group, for months hiding in men’s cloth. On her own, she escaped through Belgium and France to Switzerland in the winter of 1944 and was interned in a Swiss refugee camp. After the war she returned to the Netherlands and emigrated to the United States in 1947. She founded the Orange County Philharmonic Orchestra in the early 1950’s and was its conductor for many years. In the 1994 interview, at the end of her life, she shares her story for the first time.
CREDITS
Director: Toni Boumans
Assistant Director and Interview Frieda Belinfante: Klaus Mueller
Producer: Frame Media Productions
1999 Netherlands; 69 min; Screenings in Italy, USA, Netherlands, Germany
Please see tribute to Lesbians and Gay men in the resistance during Pride Month 2021 in USHMM Facebook Live Event called Pride Month: Defying Nazi Persecution.. Watch the conversation to learn about Frieda Belinfante, one of Europe’s first female conductors and a lesbian, and painter Willem Arondeus, the gay leader of this group of artists turned resisters. Being gay, their stories of courage were erased for many decades. A conversation between Edna Friedberg and Klaus Mueller
BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAIT OF FRIEDA BELINFANTE:
Klaus Mueller: Ik wilde het gevaar in het gezicht kijken. De levens van Frieda Belinfante. In: Klaus Mueller en Judith Schuyf (red.): Het begint met nee zeggen. Biografieën rond verzet en homoseksualiteit 1940-194. Amsterdam, Schorer 2006.
BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAIT OF WILLEM ARONDEUS:
Klaus Mueller: Het is zo licht om in liefde van het leven te scheiden. Willem Arondeus, homoseksueel en verzetsleider. In: Klaus Mueller en Judith Schuyf (red.): Het begint met nee zeggen. Biografieën rond verzet en homoseksualiteit 1940-194. Amsterdam, Schorer 2006.
SUMMARY OF EARLY LECTURE
“Resistance: The unknown story of Frieda Belinfante” in the conference report ‘The Holocaust in the Netherlands: A Reevaluation’, USHMM, May 1997
ACCESS TO ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW
Oral history interview with Frieda Belinfante, May 31, 1994
Transcript of Frieda Belinfante interview, USHMM
Photographs of Frieda Belinfante, USHMM
* All opinions expressed on this site are those of Klaus Mueller and do not represent the opinions of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council or United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.