Paranormal record / 1945
Amsterdam. Sunday 25 March 1945. The last weeks of the German occupation. Ida Peerdeman, 39, sat with three of her sisters and a Dominican friend, Fr. Frehe, talking about the war. Then she felt drawn to the adjoining room. A light appeared there. Out of it came "a living figure, a female form", clad in white, palms turned outwards. Only Ida saw her. A sister wrote down every word she spoke. It was the first of 56 apparitions over fourteen years. The Lady gave a title, a prayer and an image that would travel the world. The Church investigated again and again. Its answer came in 1974. Not supernatural.
Amsterdam, spring 1945. The Netherlands was in the last weeks of the German occupation. Ida Peerdeman, born Isje Johanna in Alkmaar in 1905, was an office worker. She lived with her sisters on the Uiterwaardenstraat in Amsterdam-Zuid. She later said she had first seen Mary at 12, on 13 October 1917. The day of the Fátima "miracle of the sun".