Olympic gold medalist murderered by the Nazis at Auschwitz - Estella Agsteribbe

Estella Blits was born as Estella Agsteribbe, on 6 April 1909 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her parents Samson Agsteribbe and Esterhina Frank used to call their daughter Stella.

From 28 July to 12 August 1928 the Netherlands hosted the Olympic Games in Amsterdam and in spite of criticism, women's athletics and team gymnastics debuted at these Olympics. Among the Dutch gymnasts were 5 Jewish women and Stella was one of them. The team won the gold medal for women's gymnastics and the young women became national heroines.
They were trained by Gerrit Kleerekoper - a diamond cutter by profession but a man with a passion for gymnastics. He was also a Jewish.

Individually, Stela placed 3rd at the Dutch all-around championships in both 1930 and 1934.

At the latter event, she competed as Estella Blits, having married Samuel Blits in March 1934. Samuel was a diamond cutter and also a gymnast at BATO - the same sport’s club where Stella trained. The couple lived in Amsterdam and they had two children – a daughter Nanny and son Alfred.

When on 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany, the Jews in Europe hardly imagined the impact it would have on their lives.

In January 1933 there were some 523,000 Jews in Germany, representing less than 1 percent of the country's total population. The initial response to the Nazi takeover was a substantial wave of emigration. Some 37,000–38,000 Jews emigrated, much of it to neighboring European countries such as France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, and Switzerland. Those who were specially likely to emigrate were Jews who were politically active. Other measures that spurred decisions to emigrate in the early years of Nazi rule were the dismissal of Jews from the civil service and the Nazi-sponsored boycott of Jewish-owned stores.
However, during the next two years there was a decline in the number of emigrants. This trend may partly have been due to the stabilization of the domestic political situation, but was also caused by the strict enforcement of American immigration restrictions as well as the increasing reluctance of European and British Commonwealth countries to accept additional Jewish refugees.

Despite the passage of the Nuremberg Race Laws in September 1935 and subsequent related decrees that deprived German Jews of civil rights, Jewish emigration remained more or less constant.

However, the events of 1938 caused a dramatic increase in Jewish emigration. The German annexation of Austria in March, the increase in personal assaults on Jews during the spring and summer, the nationwide Kristallnacht or the "Night of Broken Glass" in November, and the subsequent seizure of Jewish-owned property all caused a flood of visa applications. Although finding a destination proved difficult, about 36,000 Jews left Germany and Austria in 1938 and 77,000 more in 1939.
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