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Betty was born in Antwerp, Belgium, on Dec. 16, 1934, to Esther and Nathaniel Prins. Her brother, Fred, was born in November 1939.<\/p>\n\u201cMommy, mommy.\u201d Five-year-old Betty Hyatt, then Betty Prins, frightened by the unfamiliar low, rumbling noises in the sky, jumped out of bed and ran screaming for her mother. It was early morning on Friday, May 10, 1940, the day she and her father were planning to travel to Holland to visit relatives. Instead, Betty and her family sought shelter as planes flew low overhead in formation, dropping bombs on Antwerp. \u201cI was terrified,\u201d recalled Betty, who had never before seen an airplane.<\/p>\n
Betty was born in Antwerp, Belgium, on Dec. 16, 1934, to Esther and Nathaniel Prins. Her brother, Fred, was born in November 1939.<\/p>\n
Betty\u2019s father built and operated a factory for machine embroidery, employing 30 workers. It was located behind the family\u2019s house in Borgerhout, an Antwerp suburb.<\/p>\n
The business was successful, and Betty lived a privileged life with a nanny and vacations at beach resorts. She briefly attended private school before the war broke out.<\/p>\n
After Belgium was attacked, Betty\u2019s father contacted the Dutch consulate and arranged for passports to Surinam, a Dutch colony in South America. To get there, the family needed to pick up visas in Marseilles and then board a ship in Portugal.<\/p>\n
Betty\u2019s parents closed the house, gave Betty\u2019s dog to a neighbor and left in their \u201cbig, monstrous-looking Packard,\u201d according to Betty. The road was crowded with other evacuees, many walking with bundles, pushcarts and donkeys.<\/p>\n
After crossing into northern France, they stopped at a Red Cross refugee camp. Betty\u2019s father then returned to Antwerp for Betty\u2019s mother\u2019s parents, her mother\u2019s sister and the sister\u2019s fianc\u00e9.<\/p>\n
The first day out with all eight family members, the car was sideswiped and sent tumbling over an embankment, rolling over several times. No one was hurt, but a tire was destroyed. It took three days to locate a replacement.<\/p>\n
The family then drove to Reims, stopping for the night in a church converted to a refugee camp. Before daybreak, Betty\u2019s father arose and insisted, against other family members\u2019 wishes and for no apparent reason, they leave immediately. They were barely five minutes away when they heard a loud explosion. The church had been bombed and, they later learned, 500 were people killed.<\/p>\n
The family eventually stopped in the village of Saint-Sauveur-en-Rue, where they lived in an abandoned hut. Betty attended school, learning French fluently. She befriended a golden retriever, naming her Mirette. The dog came to live with the family and subsequently gave birth to 12 puppies. Local farmers, needing guard dogs to fend off looters, bartered milk, eggs, butter and bread for them.<\/p>\n
Seven months later, the family left, giving Mirette to a farmer. On the day they departed, Mirette howled inconsolably, and Betty cried until she fell asleep. \u201cIt was a terrible loss,\u201d Betty said.<\/p>\n
After many months and many stops, the family arrived in Marseilles. But it was Vichy France, and as Jews and non-French, they were unable to travel any farther. Plus, having run out of money, Betty\u2019s father was forced to sell the car.<\/p>\n
The Dutch consul suggested they go to Lamastre, a nearby village, where Betty\u2019s father found a job as a janitor. Betty and her family lived in a second-floor flat with no water.<\/p>\n
As foreigners, Betty\u2019s family was required to report to the police station weekly. One week, however, Betty\u2019s grandfather inadvertently revealed to the police that the family was Jewish.<\/p>\n
A few nights later, a woman dressed in black knocked at Betty\u2019s parents\u2019 flat. \u201cDo not be afraid,\u201d she said. \u201cI work with the\u00a0maquis<\/em>\u00a0(the French resistance).\u201d She told them that the Germans were planning to round up young people and deport them to Germany to work.<\/p>\n Betty\u2019s aunt and fianc\u00e9 decided to flee, heading to Portugal on foot. The resistance arranged false papers and employment for Betty\u2019s father, relocating him near the Pyrenees. But he was betrayed for working as a Frenchman, arrested and later, on Jan. 31, 1943, transported to the Drancy transit camp outside Paris.<\/p>\n Less than a month later, Betty\u2019s grandfather was picked up in Lamastre and also sent to Drancy. Betty discovered after the war that he died en route.<\/p>\n Soon after, learning that the Germans were rounding up women and children, resistance members took Betty and Fred by bicycle in the middle of the night to a farmer\u2019s house, where they were united with their mother and grandmother. After a short stay, the family found an abandoned stable in the higher regions of Ard\u00e8che, in south-central France.<\/p>\n There was no furniture, and they filled bags with hay to use as beds. Betty remembers lice and bed bugs as well as huge rats that ate the chestnuts they gathered.<\/p>\n Betty\u2019s mother joined the French resistance in the nearby town of Gilhoc-sur-Orm\u00e8ze, taking Betty with her to meetings. Betty became a child courier, alerting local farmers to light bonfires designating safe landing places for Allied special forces being parachuted in.<\/p>\n At those meetings, Eug\u00e9nie Brunel, a midwife and resistance member, took a liking to Betty and offered to give her a home. Betty\u2019s mother handed her over on the spot. \u201cAt that very moment the bond between my mother and me was broken,\u201d recalled Betty, who was 8 at the time.<\/p>\n Betty lived under the false name of Berta Lambert. She attended school whenever possible and worked for the resistance as needed. Occasionally she walked uphill to visit her family. \u201cEug\u00e9nie was a magnificent woman,\u201d according to Betty, who later nominated her for Yad Vashem\u2019s \u201cRighteous Among the Nations\u201d designation, which was granted in 1981.<\/p>\n The war ended in France in August 1944, and a few months later Betty returned with her mother, grandmother and brother to Lamastre. Betty\u2019s mother subsequently suffered a nervous breakdown, and in 1945, Betty and Fred were sent to a displaced persons camp for children in central France.<\/p>\n They were later put in another camp for children in northern Belgium, but then found themselves living with their mother and grandmother in a run-down apartment in Brussels.<\/p>\n One day, Betty\u2019s mother announced that she had remarried. \u201cMy father. My father,\u201d Betty screamed. Her mother told her that he had died in a concentration camp, but Betty didn\u2019t want to believe her. \u201cIt was unbearable,\u201d Betty said. Years later, she learned that her father had been shot in Auschwitz by an SS soldier the day before the camp was liberated.<\/p>\n The family moved back to Antwerp, but Betty and Fred were again put in a displaced persons camp. Then Betty\u2019s mother\u2019s brother, who had gone to New York before the war, returned for the family. They arrived in the United States on Sept. 17, 1946.<\/p>\n Betty was enrolled in several schools in New York, but with no foundation and poor English skills, school was very difficult. Eventually she attended Forest Hills High School in Queens, where a teacher befriended her and introduced her to arts and literature. \u201cWhen that happened, I had something to live for,\u201d Betty said.<\/p>\n Betty met her future husband, Fred Hyatt, in the standing-room section of the Metropolitan Opera, and they married in 1955. They moved to Los Angeles a year later and had two sons: William, born in 1957, and Kenneth in 1961.<\/p>\n In 1972, Betty began working for the State of California. She retired as a foster care licensing program analyst in 1996.<\/p>\n Today, Betty, 78, works as a docent at the J. Paul Getty Museum and speaks at the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. She also enjoys visiting with her sons, daughters-in-law and two grandsons.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything that happened in my life is sheer luck,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n