A crowdfunding campaign for the family of a Polish man who drowned last weekend while trying to save three children from the sea had raised over €140,000 by early on Friday morning.

Marcin Kolczynski, 37, died after breaking off a phone call to his wife to try to help the children who had gotten into difficulty in the sea near Julianadorp. The beach did not have lifeguards.

‘Marcin had three children and a wife in Poland. He was a seasonal worker and so I thought that his family would not be well off,’ Martina Janasz, who started the fund-raiser, told television talk show Editie NL.

‘As a woman from Poland, I know how tough things can be in Poland, and given the fact that he came to the Netherlands for seasonal work, then I knew enough.’ Janasz approached the family via Facebook for permission to launch the crowdfunder.

The three children in the sea were brought to safety but Kolczynski got caught up in a rip tide and disappeared from view. His body washed up an hour later.