The Nazi’s Most Wanted “Man” Was Actually a Female Conductor: How Frieda Belinfante Blew Up the Bureaucracy of Genocide and Escaped in Plain Sight

In the frozen, paranoia-filled streets of Amsterdam in 1943, the German occupation forces were hunting a phantom. The Gestapo, known for their brutal efficiency and terrifying network of informants, had a specific target in their crosshairs. They were looking for a male mastermind, a hardened resistance leader responsible for the single most damaging act of sabotage against the Nazi administrative machine in the Netherlands. They had descriptions, they had theories, and they had a burning desire to make an example of him.

But they couldn’t find him. They couldn’t find him because he was actually a she.

The “dangerous man” was Frieda Belinfante, a 39-year-old Jewish cellist and one of the first female orchestral conductors in Europe. While the Nazis searched for a male saboteur, Frieda was walking right past their checkpoints, disguised in a men’s suit, with her hair shorn close to her skull, playing the role of her life.

This is not just a story of survival; it is a story of identity, defiance, and the incredible courage of a group of artists who used their creativity to fight a war of extermination. It is the story of how a woman who was born to make music became a soldier who made history, only to be erased from it for half a century.

A Life Interrupted

Before the sky turned dark over Europe, Frieda Belinfante was already a pioneer. Born in 1904 into a musical family in Amsterdam, she was a prodigy. Her father was a Jewish pianist, her mother a Gentile. Frieda followed in their footsteps, mastering the cello and eventually breaking the glass ceiling of the classical music world by becoming a conductor. In the 1930s, seeing a woman wielding the baton was a rarity, a spectacle. But Frieda was undeniable. She led the Concertgebouw Orchestra, commanding the respect of seasoned musicians and the adoration of the public.

But when the Wehrmacht tanks rolled into the Netherlands in May 1940, the music stopped.

The occupation began with a slow, suffocating tightening of the noose. First came the restrictions, then the registrations, and then the removals. Jewish musicians were purged from orchestras. Frieda, classified as a “half-Jew” by the warped racial laws of the Third Reich, was initially allowed to continue, but she refused to register with the Kulturkamer (Chamber of Culture), the Nazi organization that controlled all artistic output. To register was to collaborate. To register was to accept the legitimacy of a regime that was systematically dehumanizing her people.

She put down her baton and picked up a different set of tools.

The Artist’s Resistance

Frieda joined the resistance, specifically a group known as the CKC (Central Artist’s Committee). It was a ragtag band of painters, sculptors, writers, and musicians—people who had spent their lives creating beauty, now forced to learn the art of deception.

Frieda discovered she had a hidden talent: forgery. The hand that had possessed the dexterity to finger complex cello concertos was perfectly steady enough to alter identity cards. She became a master forger, helping to create false papers for Jews and resistance fighters who had gone into hiding.

But by 1943, forgery was no longer enough. The Nazi administrative machine in Amsterdam had become too sophisticated. The heart of their control lay in the Amsterdam Population Registry, a massive building on the Plantage Middenlaan. Inside this fortress of bureaucracy were the files of every citizen in the city. The cards listed names, addresses, and crucially, religion.

It was the master list.

When the Gestapo wanted to round up Jews for deportation to the camps in the East, they didn’t have to search blindly. They simply went to the Registry, pulled the cards, and issued the orders. Even the best forged identity card was useless if the central registry contradicted it. If a Jewish woman was hiding under a false Aryan name, the Registry had the truth. To save the people, the Resistance realized they couldn’t just fake the papers; they had to destroy the proof.

The Audacious Plan

The idea was madness. The Registry was heavily guarded, a symbol of German order and control. Attacking it would require a level of military precision that a group of bohemian artists theoretically didn’t possess.

The plan was spearheaded by Willem Arondeus, an openly gay painter and writer who was as flamboyant as he was brave. Willem and Frieda were kindred spirits—both LGBTQ+ in a time and place where that identity was dangerous, even before the Nazis arrived. They understood what it meant to live on the margins, and they possessed a ferocity that their oppressors underestimated.

“We are artists,” Arondeus famously said. “We cannot do this with guns. We must do it with our heads.”

They devised a plan that relied not on brute force, but on theatre. They would not storm the building as soldiers; they would enter it as friends. They would disguise themselves as a police inspection team, walk right through the front door, sedate the guards, and then blow the building to hell.

Frieda’s role was critical. She was the planner, the logistical genius who helped procure the uniforms, forge the “official” inspection orders, and raise the funds to buy the explosives. She didn’t participate in the raid itself—her Jewish features were deemed too recognizable, and her role as the forger was too valuable to risk—but she was the architect of the deception.

The Night of Fire

On the night of March 27, 1943, the plan went into motion. Willem Arondeus, dressed in a high-ranking police uniform, led a team of resistance fighters to the doors of the Registry. With supreme confidence, they presented their forged papers. The guards, intimidated by the rank and the bureaucracy, let them in.

Once inside, the “inspectors” drew their pistols. They didn’t kill the guards; they sedated them and moved them to safety in the garden. This was a moral point for the group: they were saboteurs, not murderers.

Then, they went to work. They planted explosives throughout the filing cabinets. They doused the records in benzene. They set the fuses.

At 10:45 PM, a series of explosions rocked Amsterdam. The building erupted into a fireball that could be seen for miles. The fire brigade, delayed by the resistance or perhaps sympathetic to the cause, arrived late and then proceeded to flood the building with so much water that the records not consumed by flames were turned to unreadable pulp.

It was a total success. 800,000 identity cards were destroyed or ruined. The master list was gone. The machinery of deportation ground to a halt. Thousands of Jews who might have been identified and murdered were given a reprieve, a chance to disappear into the shadows.

The Aftermath and the Betrayal

The Nazi response was swift and furious. They offered a massive reward for information. And in the starving, frightened city, money talked. Within days, the network was betrayed.

Willem Arondeus and twelve other members of the group were arrested. They were interrogated, tortured, and eventually sentenced to death. On July 1, 1943, they were led before a firing squad. Before he died, Arondeus shouted his final message to the world, a defiant reclamation of his identity and his courage: “Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards.”

Frieda Belinfante was left alone. The Gestapo knew her name. They knew she was part of the inner circle. They raided her apartment, but she had already fled.

Now, she was the most wanted woman in Holland. Her face was on wanted posters. Her friends were dead or imprisoned. She had no money, no home, and nowhere to hide. Every street corner was a potential trap.

So, she made a choice that was as artistic as it was desperate. If they were looking for a woman, she would cease to be one.

Becoming “Hans”

Frieda cut off her dark curls. She dyed her hair. She donned a man’s suit, a tie, and a hat. She lowered her voice. She acquired forged papers in the name of “Hans,” a fictional brother.

For three agonizing months, Frieda Belinfante lived as a man. It was a performance that required absolute commitment. One slip-up, one feminine gesture, one moment of hesitation at a checkpoint, and she would be dead. She walked past German soldiers who were actively hunting for “Frieda Belinfante,” looking them in the eye, challenging them to see through her mask. They never did.

But the stress was unbearable. The net was tightening. She knew that eventually, her luck would run out. She needed to get out of the Netherlands.

The Impossible Escape

In the dead of winter, 1944, Frieda began her escape. It was a journey that would have tested a seasoned commando. She traveled south, moving through Belgium and France, heading toward the neutral haven of Switzerland.

She made much of the journey on foot and by bicycle. Imagine the scene: a Jewish woman, disguised as a man, cycling through Nazi-occupied Europe in the freezing cold, sleeping in barns or ditches, constantly hungry, constantly terrified.

When she reached the border region between France and Switzerland, she faced the formidable Alps. The mountains were patrolled by German border guards who had orders to shoot refugees on sight. The terrain was treacherous, burying the unprepared in snow.

Frieda, exhausted and malnourished, climbed. She waded through waist-deep snow, navigating the passes, driven by a primal will to survive. She had to cross the river Doubs, slipping past the patrols in the darkness.

When she finally stumbled onto Swiss soil, she was safe. But the transition back to reality was jarring. The Swiss authorities, confused by this person in men’s clothes who claimed to be a female musician, eventually granted her refugee status. She had survived the Holocaust, the Gestapo, and the Alps.

A Silence That Lasted Decades

After the war, Frieda returned to the Netherlands, but it was a place of ghosts. Willem was dead. Her orchestra was gone. And the country she had fought for was not interested in her story.

The post-war narrative of the Dutch resistance was heavily gendered. Heroes were men who fought with guns. Women were couriers or helpers. The idea that a woman—a lesbian woman—had been the mastermind behind the most significant act of sabotage of the war was inconvenient. It didn’t fit the mold.

Willem Arondeus was celebrated (though his sexuality was often glossed over), but Frieda was sidelined. Feeling alienated, she left Europe in 1947 and moved to the United States. She settled in Orange County, California, a conservative stronghold where she once again had to hide parts of herself.

She returned to her music. She founded the Orange County Philharmonic Society and became a beloved conductor and teacher. To her neighbors and students, she was just an eccentric, talented Dutch lady. They had no idea that the woman teaching them Beethoven had once blown up a government building and outwitted the SS.

For fifty years, she kept her story largely to herself. It wasn’t until the 1990s, near the end of her life, that historians and journalists began to dig into the true history of the Registry bombing. They found the records, the testimonies, and the truth about the “man” the Nazis couldn’t catch.

The Legacy of Frieda Belinfante

Frieda Belinfante passed away in 1995 at the age of 90. In her final years, she finally received the recognition she deserved. The Dutch government awarded her the Resistance Memorial Cross. Her story was featured in documentaries and exhibitions.

But her legacy is more than just medals. It is a testament to the power of the human spirit to resist tyranny in all its forms. Frieda fought against the Nazis not just because she was Jewish, but because she was an artist who believed in freedom. She fought against the gender roles of her time, first by taking the podium and then by taking on a male identity to survive.

Her story forces us to re-examine our history books. How many other heroes have been erased because they didn’t look like the “standard” soldier? How many other stories of queer resistance were buried in the ashes of the war?

Frieda Belinfante’s life teaches us that resistance takes many forms. Sometimes it is a bomb. Sometimes it is a cello. And sometimes, it is simply the audacity to exist, to survive, and to be yourself when the whole world wants you destroyed.

So the next time you hear a symphony, or see an act of defiance against injustice, remember the conductor who traded her baton for a disguise, and who proved that even in the darkest times, we can compose our own destiny.