Jetty Paerl
Dutch singer
Henriette Nanette "Jetty" Paerl (27 May 1921 – 22 August 2013) was a Dutch singer and resistance member of Jewish origin. She is known for being one of the Netherlands' representatives in the Eurovision Song Contest 1956 with the song "De vogels van Holland", and for being the first singer ever to perform in the Eurovision Song Contest.
Biography
Early life
Paerl was born and raised in Amsterdam. After the German invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940, she fled to London with her parents and swimmer Willy den Ouden, where she worked as a children's clothing designer at a shop in New Bond Street. She also contributed to the broadcasts of Radio Oranje, a radio programme created by the Dutch government-in-exile, due to which she became known as Jetje van Radio Oranje ("Jetty of Radio Orange") in the Netherlands. In the programme, she performed songs – written by her father Jo Paerl and composed by Louis Davids and Dirk Witte – in which the Nazis and members of the dutch collaborationist National Socialist Movement (NSB) were openly made fun of.
Towards the end of the war, Paerl became a member of the Women's Auxiliary Corps (Vrouwen Hulpkorps) of the Royal Netherlands Army. After the liberation of the Netherlands in May 1945, she returned to her home country via Zeeland and was stationed in Rotterdam. Shortly after, she learned that both her elder brothers were still alive. One had fled to Switzerland, while the other had stayed in the Netherlands during the war.
“Jetty Paerl” enters the record as dutch singer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Jetty, Paerl and Dutch can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Jetty Paerl” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Jetty, Paerl and Dutch provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q287157. VIAF identifies the subject as 7109154198330620230004. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1921, 2013, 1956 and 1940.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jetty Paerl” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.