Helena Theodora, Kuipers-Rietberg, born 26-05-1893 in Winterswijk 
as the second youngest daughter, in a reformed middle-class family of the grain merchant and miller Hendrik Rietberg and Clara Christina Theodora, born Dulfer. Theodora was the fifth child in a reformed family with eight children. After primary school she attended the three-year HBS where she met her future husband, Piet Kuipers (Pieter Heijo Kuipers (1892-1978), grain merchant). After HBS, Kuipers worked in her father’s office and her husband bought into that company. From this marriage 2 sons and 3 daughters were born.
At the HBS she probably met her future husband Piet Kuipers, who obtained a certificate at the teacher training college after that education. However, he did not choose to teach, but left for the port city of Medan on Sumatra in 1912 to work for an Amsterdam company there. When he was on leave from the Dutch East Indies in 1919, he asked Rietberg to marry him. Since her father wanted to retire from the grain trade, he did not give Kuipers permission to take his daughter, who worked in his office, back to the Dutch East Indies. That is why Kuipers bought himself into his father-in-law’s company as a co-partner, which he would continue and expand with his brother-in-law Klarien Rietberg.
Kuipers was primarily responsible for the household and upbringing and was also active in many social organisations. In 1932 she was co-founder of the Reformed Women’s Association in the Netherlands and from its foundation in 1937 she was a board member of the Association of Reformed Women’s Associations in the Netherlands. As a result, she had many contacts throughout the country that would later be of great use during the occupation.
After her marriage, Kuipers-Rietberg devoted herself first and foremost to the care and upbringing of the five children who were born between 1922 and 1932. In addition, she was, like her husband, an active member of various organisations and associations in the social and religious fields.
These would later prove to be of great use during the occupation. Kuipers-Rietberg had a strong personality, persuasiveness and perseverance, and a certain ambition. In this respect, she was in a sense the opposite of her more phlegmatic, silent husband. Living in a border town, Kuipers-Rietberg had long before the outbreak of the Second World War seen the consequences of National Socialism. As a religious woman, Adolf Hitler was for her the embodiment of the antichrist. After the German invasion in May 1940, she warned of the dangers of gradual Nazification, which threatened to undermine Christian values and beliefs. In order to put a stop to this, Kuipers-Rietberg and her husband opted for the resistance, in which their entire family was eventually involved. Initially, this consisted of delivering ration cards and distributing an illegal newspaper. Her husband – who led the local resistance from the start – and sons helped British and French prisoners of war who had escaped from German camps to return to their homeland in 1941.
Kuipers-Rietberg – who adopted the pseudonym ‘Tante Riek’, after her older sister Hendrika, who died in 1930 – invested a lot of time and energy in finding hiding places for Jews. The couple also took in two Jewish people in hiding. Since the National Socialist Movement (NSB) 
under management of the Dutch pro Nazi leader Mussert, Anton Adrian “Ad” 
had a relatively large following in Winterwijk, it was difficult for the local resistance to find hiding places. From the spring of 1943, this problem became even more urgent, because the occupying forces wanted to deport all former professional officers as prisoners of war and wanted to force all men between the ages of 18 and 35 to work in Germany, which many wanted to avoid by going into hiding. In the border region in particular, warnings had to be issued, because before the occupation people here were used to going to work in Germany because of the high wages. After the Allies had started a systematic air offensive against Germany in March 1943, the crew members of the planes shot down over the Achterhoek arrived almost simultaneously, who also had to be helped to hiding addresses.In the meantime, in November 1942, Kuiper-Rietberg had come into contact with the Reformed minister Frits Slomp 
from Heemse – alias ‘Frits de Zwerver’ – when he gave an introduction about the fight against National Socialism during a secret meeting in the Reformed Church in Winterswijk. Kuipers-Rietberg asked him to help her set up a national network of local committees. Given their mutual backgrounds, they initially worked together with leading figures from Protestant organisations. This led to the creation of the largest resistance organisation: the National Organisation for Assistance to People in Hiding (LO) and the National Resistance Groups (LKP) associated with it since August 1943.
The National Organization for Assistance to People in Hiding (LO) was a Dutch resistance movement during the Second World War between mid-1942 and May 1945.
Kuipers-Rietberg was the only woman who, as a representative of the LO of Winterswijk, attended the weekly meetings of the ‘Beurs’. There, supply and demand of people in hiding and hiding places were matched. During a discussion about whether liquidations were permitted in the event of betrayal within the LO, she showed herself to be an advocate.In the autumn of 1943, Kuipers-Rietberg went through a crisis, when she almost became overstrained due to the many and also exciting tasks. Her family advised her to stop at that time, but she did not want to hand over the resistance work she had started. At the same time, she started making payments for the National Support Fund, which had been working with the LO since the summer of 1943. This fund – set up by Iman Jacob. van den Bosch 
and the bankers G. and Walraven Wally van Hall 
– provided financial support to the families of people in hiding who had stayed behind. On 24-05-1944, a reliable police officer warned Kuipers-Rietberg’s husband of an impending arrest. After they had partly placed their children elsewhere in early July, Kuipers-Rietberg and her husband managed to escape just in time. An attempt by the German Sicherheitsdienst 
to track them down by means of announcements at the stations between Winterswijk and Arnhem and Zutphen, respectively, failed. In these announcements, they were asked to report to the counter in connection with a fatal accident involving one of their children. The couple initially hid at a cigar manufacturer in Bennekom. But because the lady of the house could no longer handle the tension of helping the people in hiding, Kuipers-Rietberg and her husband wanted to leave. However, on 17-08-1944, the courier who had come to deliver the necessary new identity papers was arrested en route due to betrayal. This put the Germans on the trail of the couple. Two days later, Kuipers-Rietberg and her husband were arrested. The couple was transferred to the Koepelgevangenis in Arnhem, 
where they were locked up in two adjacent cells. To encourage her husband, Kuipers-Rietberg sometimes sang a psalm loudly for him. The couple had agreed that she would take all the blame on herself, assuming that a woman would be less at risk than a man. The Germans soon released her husband, hoping that this would also allow them to track down other relations in the resistance. Because he saw through this, he immediately went into hiding. Kuipers-Rietberg herself was transferred to the detention centre in Arnhem, from where she was transported to the Vught penal camp 
on 25-08-1944. Due to the advance of the Allied troops and the panic that gripped the occupiers on ‘Mad Tuesday’, this camp was evacuated in early September. Mad Tuesday is a term from the Second World War, coined by Willem van den Hout, 
as a designation for 05-09-1944. On that day, emotional scenes took place throughout the Netherlands in response to the news that the country could be liberated from the German occupation at any moment. The Allies had gained ground rapidly in the preceding days.
On one of the last transports, Kuipers-Rietberg was deported to the overcrowded women’s camp Ravensbrück in Brandenburg on 07-09-1944.
There she was, because of her eyesight, rejected for the Arbeitseinsatz, placed in the knitting commando. Later she was appointed as a ‘Tischalteste’./ Table elder’, where she died on December 27 or 28, 1944.age21.
Death and burial ground of Helena Theodora, Kuipers-Rietberg, resistance name Aunt Riek.
Because she distributed food in that capacity among the women who had to work for the war industry in the Siemens factory during the day, she was able to do a lot for them in a short time. Also because of her cheerful cheerfulness, Kuipers-Rietberg was a support and comfort to her fellow prisoners, despite the deteriorating circumstances. She accompanied her resistance friend Minnie Jolink in her dying hour and – like Betsy ten Boom later – she commemorated her among her fellow prisoners. Because of her strong faith, the Germans then, as earlier in Arnhem, considered her a religious fanatic. At the end of October, Kuipers-Rietberg herself fell ill. She died on 27 or 28 December 1944, possibly as a result of typhoid or double pneumonia. As a mother of five children and driven by a strong faith, Heleen Kuipers-Rietberg considered it her self-evident task to defend the spiritual freedom of the youth against the threat of the National Socialist ideology. With her practical sense and organizational talent, she played a leading role in the establishment of the National Organization for Assistance to People in Hiding. Until her arrest, she was a driving force within it. Thus, after her death, Kuipers-Rietberg, with the honorary title ‘The mother of the LO’, became the personification of the woman in the resistance against the German occupier. 
Helena Theodora, Kuipers-Rietberg “Aunt Riek” died in the camp Ravensbrück and was burned and the ashes scattered. There is a monument stone for Helene in Winterswijk. The plaque for ‘Tante Riek’ in Winterswijk is made of bronze. The memorial plaque features a portrait of resistance fighter Helena Theodora Kuipers-Rietberg in relief.
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