The woman who was fired because she was Jewish and then poisoned herself in Westerbork

Betty always had a small bottle of poison in her bag. She got it from a family member who had produced it. Even during her mathematics class at school, a single glance in her bag was enough for her to know that no one could do her harm.

The cyanide pill would be both her death and her saviour. She had only been at Westerbork (a transit camp in the north of the Netherlands for Jews, Sinti and Roma awaiting deportation to Nazi camps, Eds.) for a few days when Betty heard in May 1943 that she would be put on the train to a next destination.

Betty took matters into her own hands, just as she had done all her life. The small bottle was her way out and by sunrise she was dead.

Was it the bottle of poison in her bag that gave her the confidence and the guts to pursue her goals? Rebekka Aleida Biegel, her full name, was in any case a woman who would not be stopped by anything.

Driven academic

In a period in which women were not supposed to live out their ambitions, Betty graduated as a physicist, retrained as a psychologist when she was 39, and then managed her own lab for 14 years at the PTT (national post, telegram and telephone company). She thought up and carried out tests to assess the suitability of aspiring telephone operators, drivers and others.

She was a driven scientist and travelled across Europe for meetings, congresses and presentations. She tirelessly wrote articles for various magazines in which she often shared her ideas for psychotechnical tests for drivers.

Betty was a tall woman with dark hair, dark eyes and was always dressed in dark coloured long dresses. To her family and friends she was Betty, but she insisted that everyone else called her Doctor Betty. She knew all too well that every bit of authority would be valuable for her as a woman in a man’s world.

Vitally important

This was important at the TH as well. Betty worked for the PTT since 1929 and deemed it vitally important that students were introduced to her subject area. She thus suggested a teaching position at the TH to the Minister, which was highly unusual at the time.

‘While psychotechnology is still a new field in science, it has turned out to be essential for the correct assessment of the human factor in the labour process. For future leaders of companies and engineers, it is thus highly desirable that they are made aware of psychotechnology.’

Her request was initially rejected, but after a well-received presentation at the Gezelschap Leeghwater (mechanical engineering study association), she was able to take up the position of a private teacher in 1934.

Human factor

Her public lesson, which can be compared to the inaugural speech in 2025, gave an impression of her field. She talked about the ‘human factor in the labour process’. She warned that it was easy to forget it as machines were taking on a bigger and bigger role while it was so important.

‘The human factor is made up of living beings, with skills and shortcomings, with desires and concerns, who are subject to moods and sensitive to all sorts of external influences. Only those who recognise this can probably become leaders.’

In 1937 Betty wrote that psychotechnology, or more specifically, the Psychotechnology Lab at PTT, had become her life’s work. But not much later, in 1941, it came to an end when all Jewish people in government service were dismissed.

A year later Betty was ordered to lead a different psychotechnology laboratory. It was at the Jewish Council in Amsterdam, the only place where she could practice her field. The organisation was established by the Germans to manage the Jewish community in Amsterdam.

Never went into hiding

Her function at the Jewish Council did not get her included in the list of ‘essential’ council members. And the name Biegel was also not included on the lists of Jews working in the areas of culture or science. Not that it would have mattered, since the people whose names were on the Jewish Council lists were still deported. It also looks like Betty never tried to go into hiding.

It is thought that Betty and her sister Annie were taken during a major razzia (pogrom) on 25 May 1943. What is known is that they arrived at Westerbork the next day. In the night of 31 May to 1 June, the sisters heard that they would be put on the train the next day.

The sisters did not let that happen. The bottle of cyanide that had been with them for years, did its job and Betty died shortly before sunrise at 54 years of age. Her sister died a few hours later.

Barely a trace

More than 80 years after her death the commemoration plaque in the Aula is the only thing at TU Delft that remembers Betty. But her efforts in psychotechnology continue to this day. The test for drivers that she designed has been used 34,565 times and was only replaced by a new version in 1971.

The impact of her private lessons is impossible to say. But without Betty Biegel, psychology in working environments in the Netherlands would have been very different.

• Source: Rebekka Aleida Biegel (1886-1943), Een vrouw in de psychologie, A.C. Rümke (1996)

 With thanks to Abel Streefland (University Historian at TU Delft)

Addition 20-5-2025: The plaque in the Aula may be the only physical reminder of Betty Biegel, but the Innovation & Impact Center honored her by naming a room after her. It is located on the fourth floor of Tower C in the Bouwcampus building. The meeting room does not bear a nameplate, but it can be reserved in the booking tool under the name ‘Betty Biegel’.