Project 'Long shadow of Sobibor' Interview 16 Rudie Cortissos Project 'Late gevolgen van Sobibor'

Rudie Cortissos was interviewed twice: once before, and once after the trial. The interviews are put one after another in the transcript. Salomon (Salo) Cortissos was not yet three years old when he was taken to the first of a series of hiding adresses. At the end of 1941 his parents took him to a brother of his father, who was in a mixed marriage. A little later he came into the Poort family; his "father-in-hiding" acting as substitute manager for his grandfather's business. For safety reasons he was now named Rudie: Rudie Poort. His blond hair and blue eyes came in handy. Still later he was taken in by the family of the sister of the servant-girl who had worked for his parents before the war. He visited a Christian elementary school and from time to time saw his grandparents from his father's side, who were in hiding in the neighbourhood. By the end of 1944 Rudie had moved to his final hiding address, with Greta Knuyt in Parnassusweg. His father had been there as well, for one and a half year, hiding in between a floor and a ceiling, but Rudie found out about this only in January or February 1945. Both Rudie and his father survived the war; his mother was rounded up and murdered in Sobibor. After the war Rudie, his father, and Greta Knuyt moved to Minervalaan. In 1949 his father remarried a Czechoslovak woman whom he had met on a business trip, and Rudie's former "hiding-mother" disappeared abruptly from his life. He never had warm contacts with his stepmother. Rudie Cortissos married in 1961 and has two children as well as four grandchildren.