Salomon (Rudie) Cortissos (* 1939) was born in Amsterdam, where he went into hiding as a two-year-old in 1941. While his parents went into hiding elsewhere, Salomon was taken in by the manager of his grandfather’s store under the name Rudie Poort. It helped that he was blond and had blue eyes. Rudie later was sheltered by the Sakes family, and at the end of 1944, he arrived at his last address as an “onderduiker” at Greta Knuyt’s, where he was reunited with his father who had been staying there for a year and a half and where they survived the rest of the war together. His mother was arrested and murdered in Sobibor. He is known by the name Rudie to this day and has made a career in the pharmaceutical industry, serving as honorary consul of the Czech Republic in the Netherlands and becoming intensively involved with Jewish organizations. Rudie joined as a co-plaintiff in the trial of John Demjanjuk.
