Rustington Hall's oldest resident, an award-winning Dutch hero, celebrates her 104th birthday

Anna Maria van der Vaart, known as Riet, suffered the deprivations of all Dutch people during the Second World War but nevertheless protected two Jewish people and won an award for helping them survive.

Daughter Riëtte Ardern said: "It was a terrible time, with acute food shortages under a brutal occupying regime which dealt out the severest penalties to those who hid Jewish persons. Nevertheless, that is what she did for two people, both of whom survived."

Riet was awarded the title Righteous Among the Nations in 2006 by The Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority and her name is inscribed at Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, in honour of the help her family gave.

The Jewish girl her family helped moved to Australia after the war and lived to be 100, remaining in close contact with Riet.

Riet was born in Holland on July 22, 1919, and was married around the time of the German occupation, when there was increasing hardship for the whole population.

Her husband was a senior manager at Unilever in Holland and after his retirement, the couple moved to the south of France to a home on the Atlantic coast.

After her husband died, Reit came to Rustington Hall to be close to her daughter Riëtte and son-in-law Graham Ardern. She has two other daughters, who live in Holland and visit regularly.

Riëtte said: "Graham remembers visits to her house in Holland where she kept an eclectic number of animals, which she adored and still does. She had horses, donkeys, sheep, goats, deer, cats and dogs. She would have had an elephant if she could!"

Riet celebrated her 104th birthday at Rustington Hall on July 22 with her daughters, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and friends and while the weather could have been kinder, the ambiance inside was lively and warm.