Michael Levenston has long known about his father’s heroism in the Second World War. But he didn’t know his father dated a Dutch woman there, a nurse, who helped rescue downed Allied pilots—and he had no idea his father had gifted the Resistance member several personal keepsakes, including a battered Canadian flag, his army beret and a radio. The woman kept those artifacts until her death in 2014.
Having recently discovered his father’s wartime romantic past when he sorted through old wartime photos and letters, he felt suddenly compelled to repatriate the flag, especially after hearing U.S. President Donald Trump taunt Canada as “the 51st state” and Prime Minister Mark Carney retaliate with the country’s “Elbows up” campaign.
Levenston, from his home in Vancouver, contacted the woman’s family, and asked them to try to find the flag. The flag arrived recently back in Canada, in relatively good condition, despite some insect holes and dirt stains, and now Levenston plans to fly it proudly to celebrate Canada Day 2025.
On this special Canada Day episode of The CJN’s North Star podcast, host Ellin Bessner sits down to hear the full flag story with Michael Levenston—and also calls across the pond to speak with the Dutch ex-girlfriend’s son, Rein Putman Cramer, who lives in Naarden, the Netherlands.
Transcript
Gerald Levenston: We, our boys had nothing to do, they needed something, and we got a dozen three-tonne trucks that we had doing nothing and soldiers to work, and they put that museum back to work.
Ellin Bessner: That’s the voice of the late Gerald Levenston, a Toronto jeweller and a decorated Canadian Jewish war hero. He was speaking not long before he died in 2010 about how, after his men liberated the Netherlands from the Nazis in 1945, he gave them a different kind of mission—to help a famous Dutch art museum retrieve hundreds of priceless Van Gogh and Picasso paintings, which had been carefully hidden deep underground during the fighting to prevent them from being destroyed by bombs or stolen for Hitler’s own collection.
It was just one of the operations for which Levenston would win gallantry medals during and after the Second World War. The British and the Dutch governments awarded him their countries’ highest honours. Canada mentioned him in dispatches.
Just a few months earlier, Levenston carried out another important wartime task, one that he was equally proud of but would receive no such write-up, except in one of his letters home to his mother back in Toronto, and much later in my book “Double Threat,” about the 17,000 Canadians of Jewish faith who fought Hitler. Levenston was ordered to accept the surrender of Nazi generals and their men on May 5, 1945, at a ceremony at a lakeside resort in Germany. As his Brigadier General told him, “I want a Jew telling those bastards what to do.”
When the fighting ended, Levenston was stationed in Holland, and since he had a desk job and, as he said, was in charge of the occupation forces and a lot of Canadian fighting men now biding their time, waiting to go home, he could spare some time for romance. It was then he met Ada Hugenholtz, a Dutch nurse who had worked with the Resistance and helped save downed Allied pilots. Their whirlwind love affair lasted just four months. By the end of 1945, Levenston decided his widowed mother needed him back home, and that was it. Ada gifted him a painting. He left her with his beret, a radio, and a large Canadian flag, which the troops had carried with them into battle. They never saw each other again.
But now, that flag has been returned to Levenston’s son back in Canada 80 years later by Ada’s son, just in time to fly it on Canada Day and give a little extra patriotic energy to this country, which is fending off an economic trade war attack from the U.S. President Donald Trump, who’s also threatened to make Canada the 51st state.
Michael Levenston: And so I feel this flag has power because we need it. Today, we’ve got four more years of trouble.
Ellin Bessner: I’m Ellin Bessner, and this is what Jewish Canada sounds like for Monday, June 30, 2025. Welcome to North Star, a podcast of The Canadian Jewish News made possible thanks to the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.
Ellin Bessner: Michael Levenston of Kitsilano, B.C., has researched his family’s records and kept the boxes containing the papers and letters of his late father, Lt.-Col. Gerald Levenston. His father died 15 years ago, but it was during the pandemic that his son discovered his dad’s old film negatives, which he’d never seen before, and letters from Ada. Long story short, the younger Levenston tracked down Ada’s family, connected by email with her son, Rein Putman Cramer, who lives an hour outside of Amsterdam. It turns out both men are 73. They were born a few years after the war, and while they never met or spoke to each other except by email until this podcast, both understood the cost of freedom and democracy and why their parents fought to earn it.
Michael Levenston joins me from Vancouver with the flag, which is a bit moth-eaten and dirty but still in great condition considering it was last in Canadian hands 80 years ago. Rein Putman Cramer joins from the Netherlands to explain why he shipped the flag here right before the 80th anniversary of his country’s liberation on May 5th.
Michael Levenston: Hello, Ellin.
Rein Putman Cramer: Thank you, thank you. Nice to meet you.
Ellin Bessner: And this is the first time you’re actually seeing each other or speaking to each other in person.
Rein Putman Cramer: That’s right.
Michael Levenston: It’s a great honour. It’s a great honour to see Rein. Yes.
Rein Putman Cramer: Very nice, very nice. We’ve been writing together.
Michael Levenston: We’ve been emailing for a few years now.
Ellin Bessner: Well, let’s talk about that. How did you find each other? And I assume this started with Michael?
Rein Putman Cramer: True.
Michael Levenston: My father died in 2010. I went through all these boxes and put together the letters he wrote to his mother during the war. And I thought I went through everything, but some years later, I found a small plastic canister with a roll of negatives. I’d looked at it before, and it just had Canadian soldiers doing sports events in Holland. But I thought, I’m just going to get these printed. And when they came back, there were a number of civilian shots, and one of them struck me.
My father was sitting on the fender of his officer’s car, a 1938 Packard convertible, and next to him was a very beautiful Dutch nurse. They had the same position on the fender and they both had the biggest grin on their faces, which, you know, leads you to think that they’re good friends. I had known that there was an Ada from one photo my father kept of Ada with his beret on. He told me at one point in my interviews with him years ago that she was a very brave Dutch nurse involved in the underground, saving Allied soldiers and smuggling them into Belgium. I barely knew any of this. I thought, well, I’ve got this new photo. It’s fabulous. I’m going to start genealogical research out there and see if she’s alive or anybody’s alive. It went to very distant people, related, finally, and very luckily, Rein, because he responded in such a positive way. It was very exciting. Since then, we’ve been in touch.
Ellin Bessner: Okay, before we go any further, for younger listeners who don’t know what a negative is, it’s like film, from a camera from the old days. When did you make contact?
Michael Levenston: 2020, I believe.
Ellin Bessner: And Ren, did you know about this photo or this romance at all from your side?
Rein Putman Cramer: I think this photo I knew. Then it was a photo of my mother in a beret in The Hague. I understand afterwards it was Gerry’s beret, which Gary had.
Ellin Bessner: So Gerry, the father.
Rein Putman Cramer: Yes.
Ellin Bessner: Did she tell you about this, like, when she was young or at the end of her life? How did you know who this guy was?
Rein Putman Cramer: My mother had a small little box that said “secret little things” that I hadn’t seen before. She once in a while talked about small things that happened during the war. One of the things we all knew—my brother, my sister, my father, and I—was about Gerry, that they met, had parties together, and that he had a special relationship. We found in the box at that time letters from Gerry; that box was only looked into basically after my mother died.
Ellin Bessner: So you actually could be brothers by a twist of fate.
Rein Putman Cramer: Yeah.
Michael Levenston: My brother was always worried—one of his conspiracies—that we had family in Europe.
Rein Putman Cramer: Yeah, half true.
Ellin Bessner: Are you both the firstborn of your families?
Rein Putman Cramer: No, no, I’m number two.
Michael Levenston: I’m number two.
Ellin Bessner: All right. So the thing that’s so interesting is that you kind of found each other. This is the 80th anniversary. There have been lots of celebrations and parades in Canada. The government sent veterans to Apeldoorn and all the usual, you know, parades that happen each year that the Dutch honour the Canadians who liberated them. So you had a special exchange of gifts or artifacts as well. And tell me about that, Michael, that process. And then Rein as well.
Michael Levenston: Well, I knew that the family had kept some precious gifts from 1945 that my father had left with Ada. He left on a plane, probably 1939, maybe New Year’s Eve. Sad time. I know he left champagne because they celebrated with champagne. Ada felt very mixed feelings. Not joy, but it was a New Year.
He left a radio that was very important to him. He used it in Europe. I see it in his mother’s letters. He also left his Canadian flag. Rein had told me about this at that time, and he’d said, Do you want it? I couldn’t think of a reason I needed the flag in 2020. I thought maybe it would go to a famous museum there. How do you pronounce that museum? Because Dad and the soldiers had helped restore the paintings, but they couldn’t find a use for it. So it stayed.
Then in February, when we were having this beginning of the onslaught from the United States President, five of our ex-prime ministers said, “Fly the flag, be patriotic.” This is the time. I thought, well, I don’t have it. Oh, there is a flag, and it’s in the Netherlands. I will write to my friend Rein, and he got back to me, “I will look for it”. He kept looking for it and never stopping until almost the 80th anniversary in May. I was hopeful, but I also realized that old stuff goes.
Suddenly, a couple of days ago, at the door, a soft envelope comes, and I opened and held it up, and I was very emotional. Eighty years, I said, this has come back. But when I really got emotional is when I read this amazing letter that Ren had written. That’s how it got here and how exciting it is. I’ve been looking to see if there’s any bullet holes. Yeah, could be, but I can’t see any. But this flag would have been with the Canadian troops?
Rein Putman Cramer: Absolutely.
Michael Levenston: Through Europe as they liberated countries.
Rein Putman Cramer: Red Ensign.
Michael Levenston: Red Ensign.
Rein Putman Cramer: Ensign.
Michael Levenston: Ensign. It was the flag before 1965, before we got the Maple Leaf flag. And this kept the troops moving. It has power; it has strength. It shows us what we can do when we all join together. And the Canadian troops who were developing the strength. I have to push this little book here, The Best Little Army in the World.
Ellin Bessner: By Granatstein. It’s a great book.
Michael Levenston: This is important to show how the Canadian troops developed from university students, non-military to being a fighting force. And so I feel this flag has power because we need it today. We’ve got four more years of trouble, and we need something.
Ellin Bessner: Maybe more. Maybe more.
Michael Levenston: But he is going into his ’80s, and I know I’m going on, but we have allies just now. Rein. He is an ally in the Netherlands right now, in May. Canadians have allies around the world. I’m going onto my soapbox.
Ellin Bessner: Rein, why did you decide you wanted to give this flag back when it’s such a big part of your family’s story all these years?
Rein Putman Cramer: First of all, it is, of course, nice to give something back, and it will have a very important tool to Michael, because he said to me, also he wrote to me, we fought for democracy in Europe. And he said, well, this flag symbolizes it. And now be in Canada. We all are fighting also for democracy, but against someone else, Southern borders.
Ellin Bessner: Where did you keep it all these years?
Rein Putman Cramer: My mother kept it. She had that small little box also. I’ve had it at a certain moment. I’ve had it, I think, on a wall. Then I brought it with me from Holland to France. Then we stored it away again. My wife stored it away, and then I didn’t know where it was anymore. But then my son, he had saved for many years around a bottle of whiskey. And he found that bottle of whiskey, and there that flag was as well.
Ellin Bessner: Where was it? Was it Canadian whiskey?
Rein Putman Cramer: I don’t know. He took the bottle. Then I took the flag.
Ellin Bessner: I wanted to ask you, Rein, about your mom, because Michael mentioned that she was in the underground doing her nursing, trying to save Allied forces. What do you know about that?
Rein Putman Cramer: Well, during the war, first of all, she was a nurse in Holland. She cycled a lot, and she cycled for the Resistance. A nurse is generally a person who can cycle around and show papers and she has to go to help some people somewhere in the city or the countryside. So if there were German checkpoints, then she would pass for the Resistance. She was, first of all, a messenger, all secret. So she didn’t know names or whatever. If she would be caught, that you couldn’t tell much. She took guys on a bicycle. She managed to take them through, let’s say, to the border of Belgium. Then someone else was waiting somewhere in the woods to take them home to France.
Ellin Bessner: Did anyone in your family get killed or did the Gestapo take them?
Rein Putman Cramer: Yeah, my father. My father has been in jail and in the concentration camps twice in Germany.
Ellin Bessner: Why was he captured? Because he was also in the Resistance. Or was he Jewish?
Rein Putman Cramer: He was in the Resistance.
Ellin Bessner: But they didn’t know each other then, your parents, right? Or they did.
Rein Putman Cramer: My parents knew one another.
Ellin Bessner: But there wasn’t this love triangle, is what I’m trying to say with Michael’s dad. It was completely separate.
Rein Putman Cramer: That was separate. My parents got married in 46, 47. 46 or 47.
Ellin Bessner: Do you know why, and this is for either of you, the romance didn’t go any further? Was religion at all a part of it?
Michael Levenston: Well, Dad left. He’d waited and waited and waited to be demobilized, and he only had his mother in Toronto. His brother and father had died before 1930, so he was the sole supporter of her, and he had to get back and make a business and a life. I think that was a huge part of being unable to find the money and the time to fly back.
So I think he loved Ada very much. I think it was after the war and the distance and the financial situation. That’s all I can say at this point because he never spoke. He wouldn’t speak about old girlfriends. He was married to my mom, like your Mother and Dad Rein, for 48 years. Yet we have a very strong connection 80 years later. Now the flag has come, and it’s going to go a long way to helping us in Canada. I have to thank you, Rein, for this unbelievable gift. Best gift ever.
Rein Putman Cramer: That was a nice one.
Michael Levenston: Very nice.
Ellin Bessner: When are you two meeting each other?
Michael Levenston: I don’t travel, unfortunately, but if Rein comes to Vancouver. We’ll celebrate him here.
Rein Putman Cramer: I have to bring some champagne because your father liked that much. They wrote letters, and I thank Michael for sending me the letters of my mother because that was very nice to read.
Michael Levenston: We shared our letters, the love letters, and they’re quite touching.
Rein Putman Cramer: Yeah, it’s nice.
Ellin Bessner: How old were they at the time? Do you know? Can you figure it out?
Rein Putman Cramer: My mother was in war, let’s say from when she was 20 when it started, and let’s say she was 25, 26 when Gerry and Ada met one another.
Ellin Bessner: How old would Gerald have been?
Michael Levenston: He was born in 1914, so I’m assuming he was around 30ish. But I don’t have my calculator here.
Rein Putman Cramer: No, he’s 31.
Michael Levenston: Thank you.
Ellin Bessner: You don’t know exactly where their meet-cute was, where they met. I mean, I’m saying meet-cute because that’s now, how and where they actually first met?
Michael Levenston: Probably an army pub or restaurant or nightclub set up for the Canadians. But it’s Rein’s sister that found the date and the location of their first meeting in a diary, in your mom’s diary, because that’s somewhere in the back of that little booklet I did. They got together at the end of August, I believe, in 1945. The peace had been there a long time and all the Canadians were wining and dining. Certainly my father, who was an officer, had so much to do in terms of social life.
And he took Ada, I believe, to a very important celebration, perhaps at the palace at the end of their time together when my dad and some Canadian officers won a medal. I have it in English, the Order of Orange Nassau, where the royals were.
Rein Putman Cramer: Prince Bernard.
Michael Levenston: Yes.
Ellin Bessner: Wow, that is something. And so now you have the flag. Where’s the beret?
Rein Putman Cramer: I have it. I have it here, but I can’t find it.
Ellin Bessner: Okay, finally, is there anything you want to talk and tell each other?
Michael Levenston: I’ve just learned so much from Rein today, from his stories and thanks to you, Ellin, that I never would have heard without you bringing us together. Thank you.
Ellin Bessner: And what about you, Rein? What questions do you have for Michael or anything you want to say?
Rein Putman Cramer: Amazing to meet one another after all those years and to hear a lot of things. I also was a bit reluctant because just like Michael said about his father, my mother was pretty private, and I also had to think about was such it a good idea to talk too long about it.
Michael Levenston: And thank you for doing it. And thank you for doing it for Canada. This is your resistance.
Rein Putman Cramer: The resistance goes on. You have to fight for democracy.
Michael Levenston: Yes.
Rein Putman Cramer: Does it come by itself?
Ellin Bessner: I wonder what your dad, Gerald, Colonel Levinston, and your mom, Ada, what they would have made of the world today.
Rein Putman Cramer: Well, first of all, my mother and my father, they admired the Canadians for fighting so hard to liberate us. At this moment, I think they wouldn’t be very happy with what was going on in the United States.
Michael Levenston: My father was a very proud Canadian in every way. He would be as upset as the Canadian public is today.
Ellin Bessner: It’s been an honour. Thank you so much.
Rein Putman Cramer: Thank you very much.
Michael Levenston: Thank you, Reine. And thank you, Ellin. Bye-bye.
Ellin Bessner: And that’s what Jewish Canada sounds like for this episode of North Star, made possible thanks to the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.
If you want to learn more about the story and Gerald Levenston, go to the links in our show notes.
One more fun fact about him: the Canadian army paid tribute to him while he was in the Netherlands because he opened a very popular army hamburger stand for the men. It was called The Blue Diamond.
Our show is produced by Zachary Judah Kauffman and Andrea Varsany. The executive producer is Michael Fraiman. And our music is by Bret Higgins. We’re off for Canada Day, and we’ll be back Wednesday, July 2nd. Thanks for listening.
Show Notes
Related links
- Read more about Lt.-Col. Gerald Levenston’s role in accepting the German surrender, in May 1945.
- Watch a video of Lt.-Col. Levenston describe why he got Canadian troops to rescue hundreds of priceless Van Gogh and Picasso paintings after the Canadian Army liberated the Netherlands from the Germans in 1945.
- Buy the book about Gerald Levenston’s wartime romance with Ada Hugenholtz, a Dutch nurse in the Resistance.
Credits
- Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
- Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Andrea Varsany (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
- Music: Bret Higgins
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