Word Celebrity Blog

Resistance Members In 
Belgium And Netherlands

During World War Two, there were literally thousand upon thousands of genuine heroes that never put on a military uniform.  In this post I will be telling you about a few of them who were in the "Resistance" movement in Belgium and the Netherlands.



Occupation of Denmark



















In the early morning hours of April 9, 1940, a few Danish troops engaged the German army, suffering losses of 16 dead and 20 wounded.  The Germans lost 203 soldiers, along with 12 armored cars and several motorcycles and automobiles were destroyed.  Four German tanks were damaged.  One German bomber was damaged, as well.  Two German soldiers were temporarily captured by the Danes, during the brief combat fighting.





















Cecil von Renthe-Fink in 1940.jpg

At 04:00 on April 9, 1940, the German ambassador to Denmark, Cecil von Renthe-Fink, called the Danish Foreign Minister Munch and requested a meeting with him.  When the two men met 20 minutes later, German Ambassador Renthe-Fink declared that German troops were at that moment moving in to occupy Denmark to protect the country from Franco-British attack. T he German Ambassador demanded that Danish resistance cease immediately and contact be made between Danish authorities and the German armed forces. If the demands were not met, the Luftwaffe would bomb the capital, Copenhagen.

As the German demands were communicated, the first German advances had already been made, with German troops landing by ferry in Gedser at 03:55 and moving north.  German Fallschirmjäger units had made unopposed landings and taken two airfields at Aalborg, the Storstrøm Bridge as well as the fortress of Masnedø, which was the first recorded attack made by paratroopers, in the world.

At 4:15 in the morning of April 9, 1940 (Danish standard time), German troops crossed the border into neutral Denmark, which was a direct violation of a German-Danish treaty of non-aggression.  It had been  signed just the previous year.















Danish soldiers in positions by Aabenraa shortly before the Germans arrived.


At 04:20 local time, a reinforced battalion of German infantrymen, from the 308th Regiment landed in Copenhagen harbour from the mine layer Hansestadt Danzig. They quickly captured the Danish garrison at the Citadel, without encountering any resistance.  The German troops moved from the harbour, towards Amalienborg Palace to capture the Danish king.  By the time the invasion forces arrived at the king's residence,  the King's Royal Guard had already been alerted and other reinforcements were on their way to the palace.  The first German attack on Amalienborg was repulsed, giving Christian X and his ministers time to confer with the Danish Army chief General Prior.  As the discussions were going on, several formations of Heinkel He 111 and Dornier Do 17 bombers roared over the city dropping the "OPROP!" leaflets.


(Opraab! in correct 1940-Danish; a proclamation) was a German leaflet dropped over several Danish cities in the Battle of Denmark. The leaflets were signed by the head of Operation Weserübung Süd, General Leonhard Kaupisch. The text, which was written in a very broken, but understandable Danish mixed with Norwegian languages, justified the German invasion as fraternally protecting the Danish and Norwegian neutrality against any British aggression.  It denounced Winston Churchill as a war mongerer, and exhorted the Danish people not to resist the German presence, while an arrangement with the Danish government was being negotiated.
General Kaupisch later told a Danish journalist that the German text of the "OPROP!" was written by Adolf Hitler himself, after he had scrapped a draft which General Kaupisch had made. It was also Adolph Hitler who arranged for the translation.






















German Junker 52 transport planes over Denmark on the morning of April 9th.


At 05:25, two squadrons of German Bf 110s attacked Værløse airfield on Zealand and wiped out the Danish Army Air Service by strafing. Despite Danish anti-aircraft fire, the German fighters destroyed 10 Danish aircraft and seriously damaged another 14 and thereby wiping out half of the entire Army Air Service.

The invasion of Denmark lasted less than six hours and was the shortest military campaign conducted by the Germans during the war. The rapid Danish capitulation resulted in the uniquely lenient Occupation of Denmark. 

















Danish troops at Bredevad on the morning of the German attack.  Two of these soldiers were killed in action later that day.

German losses in personnel have never been published, but they were probably much higher than the Danish losses.  They had 12 armored cars and several cars and motorcycles were damaged or destroyed.  Four tanks were damaged.  Several German planes were hit by ground fire and one Heinkel He 111 bomber was shot down.  Two German soldiers were taken prisoners by Danish soldiers in this short war.  The Danish losses were: 11 soldiers, 3 frontier guards and 2 airmen killed. 20 soldiers were wounded. A few civilian were killed or wounded.
















One Danish officer refused to accept the order to surrender.

One Danish officer refused to accept the order to surrender. The commanding officer of the 4th regiment in Roskilde, Colonel Helge Bennike, was convinced that the government had acted under pressure and that the Germans had attacked Sweden too, so he decided to try to escape to Sweden with his men to continue the fight from there. With Copenhagen occupied and the 198th Infantry division advancing from the west and the south the only escape route still open was the ferry connection in Helsingor which still sailed normally at 10 o’clock.

At exactly that moment the 1st company of the 11th battalion marched onto the ferry berth with the battalion standard flying. In front marched Bennike with a hand on his pistol ready to use it, if anyone tried to stop them. When they reached the ferry the column turned left and marched onboard, brushing aside the astonished custom officers. He ordered the captain to sail at once, which he did, and an hour later they set foot on Swedish soil.

Though Denmark had little immediate military significance, it had strategic and to some extent economic importance.



















After the German invasions, envoys of the German government informed the governments of Denmark and Norway that the Wehrmacht had come to protect the countries' neutrality against any aggression by France and Great Britain.

After two hours the Danish government surrendered, believing that resistance was useless and hoping to work out an advantageous agreement with Germany.

As a result of the cooperative attitude of the Danish authorities,  German officials claimed that they would "respect Danish sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as neutrality."  The German authorities were inclined towards lenient terms with Denmark.  The government remained intact and the parliament continued to function more or less as it had before.  They were able to maintain much of their former control over domestic policy.

Danish public opinion generally backed the new government, particularly after the fall of France in June 1940. There was a general feeling that the unpleasant reality of German occupation must be confronted in the most realistic way possible, given the international situation.  Newspaper articles and news reports "which might jeopardize German-Danish relations" were forbidden.

After the German assault on the Soviet Union, Denmark joined the Anti-Comintern Pact, together with the fellow Nordic state of Finland; the Communist Party was banned in Denmark.  Industrial production and trade was redirected toward Germany. Many government officials saw expanded trade with Germany as vital to maintaining social order in Denmark.  Increased unemployment and poverty was feared to lead to more of open revolt within the country, since Danes tended to blame all negative developments on the Germans.  It was feared that any revolt would result in a crackdown by the German authorities.

In return for these concessions, the Danish cabinet rejected German demands for legislation that would discriminate against Denmark's Jewish minority.  Demands to introduce the death penalty were likewise rebuffed and so were German demands to allow German military courts jurisdiction over Danish citizens. Denmark also rejected demands for the transfer of Danish army units to German military use. Throughout the years of its hold on power, the government consistently refused to accept German demands regarding the Jews.

The Danish government would not enact special laws concerning its Jewish citizens. Their civil rights remained equal with those of the rest of the population. The German authorities became increasingly exasperated with this position but concluded that any attempt to remove or mistreat Jews would be "politically unacceptable."





















Gestapo officer Dr. Werner Best.


Even the Gestapo officer Dr. Werner Best, plenipotentiary in Denmark from November 1942, believed that any attempt to remove the Jewish population would be enormously disruptive to the relationship between the two governments and recommended against taking any action concerning the Jewish People of Denmark.






































Gestapo officer Dr. Werner Best (right) with Erik Scavenius, Danish PM .jpg

On June 29, 1941, days after the invasion of the USSR, Frikorps Danmark (Free Corps Denmark) was founded as a corps of Danish volunteers to fight against the Soviet Union. Frikorps Danmark was set up at the initiative of the SS and DNSAP who approached Lieutenant-Colonel C.P. Kryssing of the Danish army shortly after the invasion of the USSR had begun. The Nazi paper "Fædrelandet" proclaimed the creation of the corps on June 29, 1941. According to Danish law, it was not illegal to join a foreign army, but active recruiting on Danish soil was illegal. The SS disregarded this law and began recruiting efforts — predominantly recruiting Danish Nazis and members of the German speaking minority.




The Netherlands


























Prior to the German invasion, the Netherlands had adhered to a policy of strict neutrality. The Dutch had not engaged in ANY war with any European nation since 1830.  During World War I,  the Dutch were not invaded by Germany and anti-German sentiment was not as strong after that war as it was in other European countries.  The German invasion came as a great shock to the Dutch people. espite strict neutrality, even going so far as shooting down British as well as German warplanes over Holland,  the country's ships were constantly attacked by the German after September 1, 1939,  the beginning of World War II.  The sinking of the passenger liner SS Simon Bolivar, in November of 1939, with 397 dead, shocked the Dutch nation.  It was not the only vessel to be sunk.  Holland began to call up its conscripts.

Dutch resistance to the Nazi German occupation of the Netherlands, during World War II,  can be mainly characterized by its prominent character of non-violence.  There was over 300,000 people in hiding that were tended to by some 60,000 illegal "landlords".

It developed relatively slowly,  but, also its counterintelligence,  domestic sabotage,  and communications networks provided key support to Allied forces. This begain in 1944 and continuing until the Netherlands was fully liberated.

However, little was accomplished in saving its Jewish population, as 75% or 110,000 out of 140,000 Jews were deported and killed.  Only 30,000 men, women, and children survived the occupation.


German Invasion Of The Netherlands


















On May 10, 1940, German troops invaded the Netherlands without a declaration of war. The day before, small groups of German troops, wearing Dutch uniforms, had entered the country.  Many of them were wearing Dutch helmets,  some made of cardboard, since they didn't have enough of real Dutch helmets. 




















Enschede was one of the first Dutch cities to be captured by the Germans.


Although the Dutch army was inferior to the German army in nearly every way, Germany lost over 500 planes in the invasion.  This was a loss that Germany could not afford and one that they would never replenish. The Dutch armed forces took a much greater toll than German forces had expected.





















The first large scale paratroop attack in history, was a failure.   The Dutch army managed to recapture the three airfields near the Hague.



















After four days, it looked as if the Dutch forces had stopped the German advance.  Adolph Hitler,  who had expected the occupation to be completed in two days, ordered that Rotterdams hould to be annihilated. This  lead to the Rotterdam Blitz, on May 14. The bombing destroyed a good part of the city center and killed over 1000 people.  This would be followed by every other Dutch city, if the Netherlands still refused to surrender.

The Dutch Government, who had quickly lost the majority of their air force, realized that they could not stop the German bombers, and so the government surrendered.




















While the Dutch envoy, who had just signed the ceasefire agreement with the Germans, was on his way back, German bombers roared overhead, and Rotterdam was bombed.  The Dutch soldiers, who died defending their country, together with at least 800 civilians who perished in the flames of Rotterdam, were the first victims of Nazi occupation. This occupation would last for the next five years.


Initial German Policy

The German Nazis, who considered the Dutch to be fellow Aryans, were less repressive in the Netherlands than in other occupied countries, at least at first. Their main goals were: (1) the nazification of the populace,  (2) the creation of a large scale aerial attack and defense system,   (3) the integration of the Dutch economy into the German economy.  As Rotterdam already was Germany's main port,  it would remain so and Dutch collaboration with Germany was widespread. A Dutch government minister instructed the secretaries- general to carry on as if nothing had happened.

The open terrain of the Netherlands and its dense population (the most dense in Europe) made it difficult to start or conceal any subversive or illegal activities.






















Waffen-SS troops parade through Amsterdam after the Dutch surrendered.


The Netherlands was surrounded by German controlled territory, on all sides.  This prohibited any escape routes.  At the very first chance, the Germans attempted to round up the Jewish population  in February 1941. That led to the first general strike against the Germans in Europe.  When the German invaders  discovered people who were involved in the resistance movement, they were usually immediately sentenced to death.  It was the Social Democrats, the Catholics, and the Communists who started the Dutch Resistance Movement.




















The Round-up of Dutch Jews.


The Nazis deported the Jewish citizens to the concentration camps, severely rationed their food, and withheld food stamps as a punishment. They also forced adult males between the ages of 18 and 45 to work in German factories or on public work projects.  In 1944, the trains were diverted to Germany, known as "the great train robberies", and the Dutch people were selected to stay in Germany as forced laborers. They were selected as "able to work or not".  Males over the age of 14 were selected as "able to work" as well as females over the age of 15.  Over the five years of occupation, and as conditions became increasingly harsh and difficult, the resistance movement became better organized and more forceful.

In the Netherlands, the Germans managed to exterminate a large proportion of the Jewish population.  The main reason was that before the war,  the Dutch authorities had required its citizens to register their religion, in order for the church taxes could be distributed among the various religious organizations.  In addition to this,  the country was occupied by the oppressive SS rather than the Wehrmacht as in the other Western European countries. The fact that the occupying forces were generally under the command of Austrians who were attempting to show that they were good Germans, by implementing anti-Semitic policy, was also a factor.   The Dutch public transportation organization and the Dutch Police also willingly collaborated in the transportation of the Jewish citizens.


The England-farers


























Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands.


The Netherlands royal family, which was led by Queen Wilhelmina, along with some 4,600 Dutch officers, sailors, soldiers, and policemen, staged a Dutch "Dunkirk". They were assisted by remnants of the country's Navy and the entire Merchant Marine.

This evacuation, to Britain, of the royal family and a many of the Dutch Government officials was critical in establishing a government-in-exile and setting up the initial intelligence networks in Holland.


















Dutch evacuees preparing to board a British warship at the port of Surabaya.


The emigration to Britain of many Netherlands military people and civilians from all over the Continent and from the overseas Dutch possessions, helped form the core of a reconstituted Dutch Royal Army, Navy, and Air Force.

They are called the 'Engelandvaarders' (England-farers, of those who travel to England).  Two major figures are noteworthy of mention and will be discussed in future posts: Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, who performed spy duties with some successful visits to Holland masterminded by Peter Tazelaar. His life was made into a movie: 'Soldaat van Oranje' ('Soldier of Orange') and Bob or Bram van der Stok, who became squadron leader of the Dutch 322-RAF squadron. He is the most decorated soldier in Dutch history. Van der Stok was one of only three surviving and successful escapees from Stalag Luft III ('the Great Escape').


The Shortwave Radio
























A major role in keeping the Dutch resistance alive was played by the BBC and "Radio Orange", the broadcasting service of the Dutch government in exile.  Listening to either one (and any other foreign, non-Nazi) programs was forbidden, and after about a year, the Germans decided to confiscate all the Dutch radio receivers.


























About half of all the radio sets were confiscated, the rest were hidden or disguised and used by the underground.


Illegal Newspapers

The Dutch underground managed to set up a remarkable large illegal newspapers. They had some 1100 titles. Some never grew out of the hand-copied stage, but there were some that managed to grow into print runs of tens of thousands.  Some of them still exist today,  such as Trouw (Loyalty), Het Parool (The Cathword) or Vrij Nederland (Free Netherlands), that in September 2010 just celebrated its 70th anniversary, with a current print-run of 45,000, almost the same number as its maximum during the war.

On May 15, 1940, (the day after the Dutch surrender,) the Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN) held a meeting in order to organize their underground existence and resistance against the German occupiers. It was the first resistance organization in the Netherlands. As a result of this, a reported 2000 communists would lose their lives in Nazi torture rooms, concentration camps or by a German firing squad.  On the same day, Bernardus IJzerdraat distributed leaflets protesting the German occupation and called on the public to resist the German occupiers.  This was the first public act of resistance.  IJzerdraat started to build an illegal resistance organization called De Geuzen (which was named after a group the rebelled against the Spanish occupation in the 16th century).

Within a few months after the invasion, a number of Revolutionary Socialist Worker's Party (RSAP) members,  including Henk Sneevliet,  formed the Marx-Lenin-Luxemburg Front.  Its entire leadership was captured and executed in April of 1942.  The Communist Party of the Netherlands and the Revolutionary Socialist Worker's Party were the only pre-war organizations that went underground and protested against the anti-semitic actions that were implemented by the German Army.


Movie Films




















The "Triumph Of The Will" Propaganda Film.


The "Triumph Of The Will" was a Nazi German propaganda film that was made back in 1935. It was a very well made film and was watched by thousands who were persuaded to join and help make one of the worst tragedies in the world.

In Holland, one of the first tangible signs that the Germans were in control, was the content of films.  After the surrender of the Netherlands, all British movies disappeared from the screens overnight.  So did most of the American movies. They were quickly replaced by German productions.  In the week before the invasion, Dutch moviegoers could see Robert Donat in Good-bye Mr. Chips or Greta Garbo in Ninotchka.  The Dutch now had to be satisfied with the likes of Hans Alberts or that reigning queen of German musical comedy, Zarah Leander.  Whereas Miss Leander was probably not too objectionable to most Dutch citizens, but,  many people could not stomach the German newsreels,  which were included in all of the movie film programs.


























The Goebbels Family Home Movies.


During 1942, the Goebbels' children appeared 34 times in the weekly newsreels, going about their lives, helping their mother, playing in the garden or singing to their father on his 45th birthday, that October, when Goebbels was presented with a film of his children playing as a gift from the German Newsreel Company.

There also was something insufferable about having to watch yet another German victory in the West or seeing the Adolph Hitler ranting again against Winston Churchill.  What came to be one of the first manifestations of the Dutch resistance, the people booed or walked out while a German newsreel was being shown. The German officials became so annoyed, that one of their earliest decrees stipulated that movie patrons were forbidden to leave a movie house any time a German newsreel was on the screen.


























Junker der Waffen-SS.


Junker der Waffen-SS was a propaganda film about the Wafen-SS soldier. It goes from bayonet fighting to blasting bunkers, glacier climbing to sniper fire. Here is the tough training that molded the leaders of Hitler’s armies.

This original Nazi film, with action-packed sequences and a brilliant musical score,  depicts life at German schools for young men of the Waffen SS (Combat SS).Junker was a paramilitary Nazi rank that was used by the Schutzstaffel between the years of 1933 and 1945.  The rank was a special position held by those aspiring for officer commissions in the armed wing of the SS,  first known as the SS-Verfügungstruppe and later as the Waffen-SS


Partisan Resistance

Partisan resistance is the term used to describe quasi-military individual and small-group covert activities. The practice is common in countries occupied by a victorious military force. Unable to retaliate with equal force, patriotic citizens often band together secretly to fight their oppressor. On the other hand, collaborators (quislings), were citizens of an occupied country who,  out of fear or resentment of their own government,  cooperate with the enemy. Partisan resistance movements have existed long before recorded history.



















Four Dutch Resistance Members.


The Resistance developed slowly for several reasons. Because of the Netherlands' geographic proximity and cultural ties to Germany, many Dutch were sympathetic to the ideas of German nationalism, and a significant portion of the population joined the Dutch Nazi Party and even the Wehrmacht. There were also Dutch civilians who informed on their neighbors.



















Germans In Amsterdam.


The swift German victory, combined with Queen Wilhelmina's seeming abandonment of the Dutch people, disillusioned and embittered many of the population of Holland. Most who collaborated, really believed that the Germans represented the future and believed that Nazi success was inevitable.  For these citizens, occupation was something merely to be accepted.  As you can see in the above picture, some citizens appear to be welcoming the German invaders.  Ruthless German countermeasures toward any anti-Nazi activity further discouraged active resistance.  But, as the Nazi occupation grew more repressive, a backlash against the Germans grew in numbers and in violence.  These sentiments were fanned by the Royal Dutch government-in-exile.


















Dutch Hidden Radios.


The government-in-exile made its presence known through the judicious use of BBC broadcasts, listened to secretly by the Dutch population.  Queen Wilhelmina became a symbol of hope to occupied Holland, and Crown Prince Bernhard took an active role in Allied planning for military operations in the Netherlands.

Geography also slowed down  the growth of the Resistance.  The lack of mountainous and forested terrain prevented the establishment of hiding areas for large groups of maquis. Moreover, the flat terrain, interdicted by many bodies of water, large and small, confined movement to the established railroads, road networks, and bridges.  These were easily controlled by the Germans,  who established checkpoints to curtail freedom of movement.  Gasoline was scarce,  and many Dutch used bicycles for transportation,  sometimes riding on the rims because of a shortage of rubber for tires. 























Dutch Resistance men learning to assemble a Sten gun.


On the other hand, the Germans were plagued by the Resistance's incessant sabotage of telephone lines and by damage to the railroads.

Partisan resistance arose in all theaters of World War II.  The German Blitzkrieg, (Lightning war), overran much of Europe from 1939 through 1942.  As a result, small pockets of resistance fighters formed in towns and cities across the continent.

Unlike in some other Nazi occupied countries, Dutch resistance against the Germans took time to gather steam for several reasons.

(1) No war had been fought on Dutch soil for more than 125 years, and the Dutch simply had no experience in waging modern warfare, especially against such a formidable enemy as the Germans.

(2) Holland is a flat, crowded land; and there were no remote forests or mountainous areas from which partisans could wage resistance.

(3) There also was a certain distaste on the part of some of the Dutch to resist; to a somewhat conservative mentality conditioned to obeying the law, it required much mental adjustment for many of the Dutch people to go against German law, even if that law was fundamentally illegal.








































A member of the Dutch resistance shows how during the war, she as a courier transported underground newspapers.

Much of Dutch resistance was both passive or non-violently active. The Dutch spoke out or published articles  against the Nazis. Mass strikes were staged in response to conscription of Dutch labor into Germany. Eventually, underground resistance groups served a variety of purposes, including rescuing and sheltering Jews, Jehovah Witnesses, Gypsies, and other persecuted persons.

*****


Anton Mussert





















Anton Mussert was born in 1894 in Werkendam, in the northern part of the province of Noord-Brabant in the Netherlands. He showed from an early age talent for technical matters and he chose to study civil engineering in Delft. In the 1920s, he became active in several extreme right organizations such as the Dietsche Bond which advocated a Greater Netherlands including Flanders (Dutch-speaking Belgium).

On December 14, 1931, Anton Mussert, Cornelis van Geelkerken, and ten others founded the Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging (NSB) (literally, the National Socialist Movement), a Dutch counterpart to the German National Socialists, the Nazis.  Anton Mussertalso became the leader of the party. In its early years, the NSB boasted that its membership included several hundred Jews, until the German party directed a more antisemitic course.
















A 1933 demonstration at Utrecht, attracted only 600 protestors.  A  year later, however, the National Socialist Movement rallied 25,000 demonstrators in Amsterdam. The National Socialist Movement received 300,000 votes in the 1935 parliamentary elections,  which was enough to alert the Netherlands to the Fascist threat.

In the 1937 voting, the Fascists polled a little more than half as much. Thereafter, Anton Mussert worked toward preventing resistance to a German invasion. A state of siege was declared by the Dutch government in April 1940 after the foreign correspondent for the New York Times, Vladimir Poliakov, broke the news that Anton Mussert's followers were preparing to kidnap Queen Wilhelmina as part of a coup.  On May 10, German troops invaded the Netherlands and Anton Mussert was permitted to suppress all political parties other than the National Socialist Movement

What was different about the National Socialist Movement compared to any other party before in the Netherlands was that their program was based on Italian Fascism and German National Socialism.


















Many elements were copied directly from them, such as uniform, salute, name titles and most importantly the
anti-Semitism.

Anton Mussert, personally wished to accomplished some things for himself too. He met several times with Hitler and pleaded for an independent Netherlands. Also, he desired to become Prime Minister of the Netherlands. Both of his requests were denied.



















After the war, he was convicted and executed for high treason.

*****




Round-up of Dutch Jews



















The Germans announced that the Jewish people were to report to the Westerbork camp, from which they would be sent to Germany to work in labor camps.  The "labor camps" in Germany, were of course fictitious. The first 2,000, mainly German Jews, were sent to Auschwitz- Birkenau, where they arrived on July 17, 1942.  It was the serving of a deportation notice on Anne Frank's sister Margot on July 5, 1942 that forced the family of Anne Frank to go into hiding, a course followed by many Dutch Jews.

1,251 men, and 300 women were tattooed and admitted to the camp.  The remaining 449 deportees, including all of the children,  the elderly and the sick, were gassed.  Trains began regular departures for the East.  By September 24, 1942,  Lt. Gen. Hanns Rauter was able to report to Heinrich Himmler that 20,000 Jews had been deported from Holland to Auschwitz,  and that preparations were in hand to deport the remaining 120,000.




















The train being loaded for Auschwitz-Birkenau.


The collection place for the Jews of Amsterdam was the Dutch Theatre, renamed in October 1941, Joodsche
Schouwburg, on the Plantage Middenlaan, where more than 1,000 people could be held.Westerbork became the main transit camp for the deportations. Commanded until September 1942 by Sturmbannführer Deppner, the camp was rubsequently under the command of Obersturmführer Dischner and finally, from the end of 1942 until 1944 that of Obersturmführer Gemmeker. The first commandant of Vught, which was known officially as KL Herzogenbusch and had originally been established as a Schutzhaftlager for Dutch political prisoners, was Hauptsturmführer Chmielewski.


He was succeeded in turn by SS-Sturmbannführer Adam Grünewald and SS- Hauptsturmführer Hans Hüttig. With the exception of two transports which went directly to Auschwitz, trains from Vught were directed via Westerbork. In view of police shortages, security for both camps was provided by members of the Dutch SS Guard Battalion Northwest.

From August 6, 1942, a Dutch police battalion commanded by Sybren Tulp was deployed to seize Jews in Amsterdam.  To a great extent, the German scheme for the annihilation of the Jewish people was aided by the cooperation of Dutch citizens; with few exceptions, the municipal administration, the railway workers and the police all contributed towards the roundups and deportations.


Stirrings Of Resistance

The initial years of the German occupation of Holland were characterized by the removal of Dutch Jews from their homeland and by the harsh economic and political measures.


























Arthur Seyss-Inquart.


The Nazis set up a puppet government at The Hague headed by Dr. Seyss-Inquart and established a Dutch National Socialist Party.  Some Dutch citizens eagerly joined the new party and took positions in the government.  Others, however, joined with the purpose of pretending to collaborate while remaining loyal to the government-in-exile.  Their positions enabled them to keep an eye on Dutch collaborators and to influence policy-making and implementation.

The Leegsma family provided a good example of this tactic.  Agardus Leegsma, his brother, and their father joined the Nazi-organized Dutch National Police.  The father had been a professional soldier in the Guards Regiment of the Royal Dutch Army during the interwar years.  The family assisted various Resistance organizations during the Nazi occupation.  During the liberation of the Netherlands,  Agardus Leegsma and his brother joined different Allied units,  serving as guides as well as being combatants.

As the harshness of the occupation grew, so did the Dutch unrest and resentment toward the Germans. Individual Dutchmen took it upon themselves to strike back.  With no central command,  these brave individuals began recruiting relatives,  friends,  and neighbors into the first Resistance organizations.

























Checking People's Papers.


The dangers of resistance were exceptionally high. The captured members of the Resistance were usually shot or sent to concentration camps.  The primary anti-Nazi activity came initially from the Social Democrats and Catholic youth leagues. The Dutch Communists began actively resisting after the Germans invaded the USSR.

Members of the Dutch royal armed forces who had not escaped to Britain and had successfully evaded German capture, secretly banded together and began collecting information for the Allies


























Two Resistance Women Taking Secret Photos Through Purse.


Under the leadership of Dr. Johan Stijkel, a Rotterdam lawyer, Maj. Gen. H. D. S. Husselman and Col. J. P. Bolton organized a Resistance group of young Dutch citizens. With the help of radio expert Cornelius Drupsteen, they established a wireless link with the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and began passing information to the Allies.

At the beginning of the war, the various small groups, including the Central Government Fighting Group received information about "how to" and some sabotage orders from Jan van Bijen, a.k.a. "Frank".   The One Arnhem group was infiltrated in 1940, with fatal consequences for it's leader and several members. 

In spite of the German Gestapo's best efforts and the lose of many members, the Resistance remained active until the end of the war..

*****


List of Dutch Saviors


The following is a list that has been compiled by "The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation's" of people who helped to protect Jewish people, in the Netherlands, from the wrath of the Nazi Dutch and Germans. This is not a complete list by any measurement.  There were thousands of Dutch citizens who took the same or similar actions as these heroes.

The Netherlands (Holland – Dutch) Saviors

   1. Berend Philip Bakker
   2. Jeltje Bakker-Woudsma
   3. Jenneke Banens
   4. Joop Banens
   5. Johan Benders
   6. GerrItdina Benders-Letterboer
   7. Bert Bochove
   8. Betty Bouten-Bergen
   9. Bernard Colenbrander
  10. Helene Derksen
  11. Janke DeVries
  12. Johannes DeVries
  13. Clara Dijkstra
  14. Arnold Douwes
  15. Carl Johann
  16. Tolé Madna
  17. Rut Matthijsen
  18. Piet Meerburg
  19. Jaap Musch
  20. N.V. Group
  21. Nieuwlande village
  22. Lien Paping
  23. Frits Philips
  24. Dora Pontier
  25. Pastor Gerardus Pontier
  26. Mima Saïna
  27. Antonius Johannes Salters
  28. Wilhelmina Salters-Kloppenburg
  29. Jan Schep
  30. Hein Sietsma
  31. Henk Sietsma
  32. Gisela Söhnlein
  33. Suzanne Spaak
  34. Arie van Mansum
  35. Dirk van Schaik
  36. Kees Veentra
  37. Dirk Wassink
  38. Leida Wassink
  39. Westerweel Group
  40. Joop (Johannes Theodore) Woortman


*****

Johan Benders

Johan Benders was born on January 7, 1907, in Bloemendaal, Netherlands and died on April 6, 1943, in Amsterdam. His wife, Gerritdina Benders-Letterboer was born on September 1, 1909 in the Netherlands and died in 1980.




















Johan Benders was a Dutch teacher at the Amsterdam Lyceum. He made no secret of his anger over the expulsion of Jewish students from the school. He had encouraged the older students, such as Tineke Guilonard*, to become involved in the falsification of identity and ration cards. Johan’s wife, Gerritdina, who worked as a speech therapist, assisted wherever possible, and the couple opened their home as a temporary shelter for Jews.

Johan and Gerritdina also took in two Jewish sisters, Rosalie and Katie Wijnberg, whose parents were in the Dutch East Indies, and who had been staying with their aunt. Both girls were former pupils of Johan and remained with the Benders until the end of the war, despite the fact that their aunt could no longer afford to pay for their upkeep. In 1943, the couple welcomed another Jewish girl, Lore Polak,  and Jan Doedens. into the family.

On April 4, 1943, the Benders were betrayed by one of their neighbors and Johan, Katie, and Lore were arrested. Johan Benders was locked up in the Amstelveenseweg prison on suspicion of having robbed the registrar’s office. He had, in his pocket, the coded addresses of eighteen hidden Jewish people. He was brutally tortured during his interrogations and had tried to commit suicide without success on two different occasions. After speaking with his cellmate, poet Gerrit Kouwenaar, Johan Benders decided to sacrifice his own life in order not to betray those whom he had rescued. On April 6, 1943, Johan Benders jumped to his death from the third floor of the prison. Gerritdina was left with their two young daughters and was five months pregnant with a third baby at the time.

























In tribute to their dead teacher, many of Johan’s former students marched passed the jail whistling the school tune.

Despite the tragedy, Gerritdina took in another Jewish girl and sheltered Jan Doedens, a former pupil of Johan’s who was avoiding a forced labor camp. She also tracked down Lore Polak, who had escaped from a concentration camp to another hideout. Katie Wijnberg was released after a few weeks in prison and came to live with Gerritdina again.

After the war, Lore discovered that her entire family had perished and so she stayed with Gerritdina for four years until she immigrated to the United States.

On March 27, 1997, "Yad Vashem" recognized Johan Benders and Gerritdina Benders-Letteboer as "Righteous Among the Nations".

A street in Amsterdam has been named in memory of Johan Benders.

*****


Jan Schep

Jan Schep was born in 1898 in Lekkerkerk and moved to Zeist, where he worked in the department of population registration.  After the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940,  the Jews of Holland were forced to carry identity cards with a J stamped in them. Three years later, the Germans ordered that the IDs also have fingerprints to prevent forging. Possessing an identity card was the only way to ensure freedom of movement and get food stamps. When the German order was received by the departments of population registry, which were responsible for issuing the new ID cards, several clerks in the Zeist Municipality set up an underground mechanism to issue forged IDs for people in hiding, including Jews.  The clerks also removed from the registry potentially harmful information, such as the names of people being sought by the Nazis.









Jan Schep was the head of this conspiracy and personally authorized the forged ID cards, even though he did not know most of the recipients.  The new IDs gave the Jews new identities and contributed to saving their lives.  The Germans discovered the forging operation in August 1944.  Schep was arrested and sent to the Amersfoort and Vught concentration camps in Holland.  In September he was sent to the Oranienburg concentration camp in Germany.  With the approach of the Allies in April 1945, Jan Schep was sent on a death march to Bergen-Belsen.  According to a Red Cross document from 1950,  Jan Schep died in Bergen-Belsen, between April 4, 1945, and May 31, 1945,  just as it was being liberated by British soldiers.  After the war, many forged ID cards and documents with Schep's signature were discovered.  The Yad Vashem ceremony was attended by Shulamit Navon and Zvia Caspi, Holocaust survivors who were saved by IDs provided by Schep.  "If he did not provide us with the papers, we would probably not have survived the war," said Navon, 80, of Rishon Lezion. Schep's sons, Jan and Hank, were kept in the dark for decades about their father's heroic role since their widowed mother never spoke about it.

Jan Schep saved hundreds of Jewish Dutch citizens during World War II, by providing them with false ID cards. He was posthumously honored as a "Righteous Among the Nations" at Yad Vashem. The ceremony bestowing the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority's highest honor was attended by his two sons, their children and grandchildren.  Hank Schep, 74, said he decided to pursue his father's story after watching a TV documentary about the Holocaust. "I felt a moral duty towards my children and grandchildren to make them realize what a person their grandfather and great-grandfather was," he said at the ceremony. The other son, Jan Schep, 80, said he felt as if there was finally closure to his father's death.  "For all these years, this was an open-ended story, as we had no grave to visit.  Now I hope we will have closure," he said.

*****


 Ed Lessing


























Ed Lessing was born in 1926 in the Hague, Holland to Nathan and Engeline Elizabeth Lessing. His father was a cellist and his mother worked as a professional telegraph operator. His brothers Attie and Freddie were born in the 1930’s.  

When the German armies overran Holland in 1940, the Lessing family was living in Delft and could not foresee to what extent their lives would change. The time came when Ed Lessing was banished from his high school. He was  forced to wear a Jewish star on his jacket, and told to prepare to leave Holland for “work relief in Germany”. Ed’s grandfather Isaac came from Amsterdam to warn them not to get on those trains and to go into hiding.

Ed’s mother started to find hiding places and rescuers for her family. Ed’s hair was bleached, he got false Christian ID papers, and he started working as a stable boy and farmhand on an isolated farm.

His mother got him into a Dutch resistance group that was living in a hut deep in the forest. The SS tried to kill this group in a dawn raid but somehow his mother miraculously rescued him and had him placed in another temporary hiding place. It is in this place that Ed learned about his Jewish heritage in a copy of the Old Testament that he found in a bookcase.

In 1944,  on a Dutch train,  a Gestapo agent arrested Ed’s mother.  She was sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.  This prompted Ed to find and join his father and two brothers who were hiding in a one- room cabin deep in the Dutch countryside near Arnhem.  They struggled through the bitter, last winter of the war,  until they were liberated by the Canadian army in the spring of 1945.
























In August of 1945 the family returned to Delft (Ed’s mom, with a lot of ingenuity had managed to survive), and Ed’s father resumed teaching piano and cello.

After liberation, they emigrated to the United States in 1947. It is here that Ed met and married Carla Heymans, a former hidden child. The young couple moved to a kibbutz in Israel where they lived from 1950-1955. Their daughter Noa was born there. They had 2 children and four grandchildren.

*****


Boissevain Family

At a time when Europe was gripped by the irresistible rise of the Nazi machine, three young lads, Janka Boissevain, Gideon Boissevain and cousin Louis Boissevain, three family members,  forfeited their lives by daring to resist Nazi control during World War II.







































Gideon Boissevain

Some sources state that their parents had initially been seduced by the right-wing messages and had gone as far as to join the Dutch Fascist Party,  which had been led by the likes of Anton Mussert,  and that the couple had promptly quit the party after the full terrors of what that party’s politics entailed began to unfold. But actually, Janka and Gideon’s mother was the fabled Adrienne Minette Boissevain-van Lennep (aka Mies), who was a key insurgent within the resistance movement.  She had always held strong opinions and had been an active member of the feminist movement earlier in life,  but it was her whole family’s anti-Nazi work during the war that was to land them in hot water.


























Janka Boissevain


The family couldn't sit back and watch while friends were annihilated just for being Jewish? Secrately, the Boissevain brothers joined a group of Dutch resistance fighters, who’d do anything to subvert the Fascists’ activities during the Second World War.

Mies and her husband Jan actually harboured Jews in a bid to help them break for freedom from their oppressors. But the Nazis were onto them and the brothers, cousin Louis and matriarch Mies herself were sharply apprehended for their resistance work in August 1942, in a Nazi haul that comprised 70 resistance members. Some were executed, others sent to concentration camps.



















Buchenwald - Prisoner Roll Call.


Mies Boissevain's husband Jan was shipped off to various concentration camps and he ended his days in Buchenwald where he died.  His wife Mies was carted off to other concentration camps,  where she was posted to work in hospitals.  Luckily she lived through the dark years of imprisonment to eventually see freedom.
























However, their sons and their nephew met a more immediate and untimely end. On October 1, 1943, just two months after they’d been apprehended, the Nazis lined the boys up (Janka aged 23, Gideon aged 22 and Louis aged 21), alongside 17 other members of the resistance.  They were all shot en masse.

The Dutch Resistance was one of the fiercest of all the underground movements in Nazi-occupied Europe.  "The Dutch never accepted the German contention that... the war was over," wrote the Dutch foreign minister in a postwar account of life under Nazi occupation.  "Their acts of resistance and sabotage grew more audacious as time passed."

Those acts of resistance and sabotage included harboring Allied soldiers and pilots who either parachuted or crash-landed within Dutch territory,  harboring Dutch Jews, and killing German troops.  The Resistance was composed of representatives from all segments of Dutch society,  ranging from the most conservative to the communists.

Smuggling a baby in your handbag, stealing bridge passes from a German officer, secretly delivering counterfeit identification to refugees in hiding, or riding past the authorities in the dark of night with contraband hidden under your coat - these were just some of the acts of bravery of the Dutch Resistance during World War II.


The Hideout On The Groeneveld Farm

The Groeneveld family farm was located near Pernis, just south of Rotterdam, and included a cow barn.  The barn was seventy feet long and forty feet wide. It was  divided into two halves, one where the cows spent the nights and the other that held hay.  During the winter of 1942-43,  Ron  Groeneveld, his father, and brother built the hideout in the center of the hay with no part of it near the walls of the barn.

























The Hideout On The Groeneveld Farm


Access was from the part of the barn where the cows were kept. The hideout existed as a refuge for operating members of the Resistance, a place that they could go to if necessary and know that they would be safe for a few days. It was never used to hide others in danger or Allied aircrew who were seeking help. To do so would have increased the likelihood of the hideout's eventual discovery and placed the Resistance fighters in mortal danger. Enemy soldiers appeared at the farm regularly, once taking a careful look at the hay barn and poking bayonets into the hay on all sides and from above the hideout.

In early 1943 the family awoke to find a horse and wagon in front of their house. No people were to be seen. The wagon was loaded with rifles, bren guns, bazookas, and ammunition -enough armament to supply 25 men. The guns and ammunition had been dropped by Bomber Command and brought to the hideout by other members of the Resistance unknown to the Groenvelds. The weapons were stored in the hideout and used regularly by Resistance members in the area until the end of the war.

Ron  Groeneveld was also hiding out during the last 2 1/2 years of the war. The enemy was rounding up all the young men and forcing them to work in factories in Nazi occupied Europe. So for over two years Ron spent every night in the hideout. During the days he worked on the farm but if the enemy appeared he would disappear into the hideout. Once when he couldn't reach the barn in time he ran off into the fields and was shot at by Nazi soldiers. Ron  Groeneveld emigrated to Canada in 1954 and farmed near Blackie, Alberta before retiring to High River.

*****


























Resistance operations consisted primarily of organizational and networking functions, as well as gathering intelligence on the occupation forces.





















































Probably the most heroic and dangerous aspect of resistance was the hiding and sheltering of Netherlands Jews and young draft-age Dutch men and women by other Dutch, collectively known as Onkerduikers ("underdivers").

Some of their hiding places were very imaginative: through a trapdoors under a fireplace grate, a hidden room behind a bookcase or through a trap door in the floor. etc.




















Dutch Jews are marched under heavy guard to the Amersfoot Internment Camp in 1942.


















Dutch Jewish school children wearing their yellow stars.


Individual Dutch were horrified and appalled at the spectacle of their neighbors and friends being rounded up and taken away to an unknown fate.  Most Dutch Jews who escaped capture were smuggled out of Holland to Britain via Belgium through France and then to Spain, or from Belgium to France, and then to Switzerland.  Smuggling people out by way of the Dutch coast was extremely dangerous, as the Germans increasingly fortified the coast in anticipation of an Allied invasion.



















There were some who hid outdoors inside stacks of logs and wood.  Some of the young Dutch men and women, as well as the Dutch Jews, hid throughout the war. Many participated in the underground activities.


















































There were some who dug and built hiding places underground.  One of them even dug a hiding place in the town's cemetery.

The underground networks established in this manner were later instrumental in hiding and helping return  Allied airmen who had been shot down over Holland.


MI-9 And The Evaders




















The British Military Intelligence Section 9 (MI-9) was set up to exploit available European Resistance networks and assist Allied airmen shot down over Europe in returning to Britain.  MI-9, also known as IS-9, infiltrated agents, usually by parachute, into occupied Europe.  These agents would link up with a Resistance cell and organize escape-and-evasion efforts in a particular area, usually after being notified by the Resistance of the presence of downed airmen.  The agents brought money, maps, and false papers to assist these airmen. The usual route was either south to Switzerland or to southern France and then to Spain and Portugal.

One such MI-9 agent was Dick Kragt,  who parachuted into Holland in 1943.  He lost his equipment, including his radio,  but, continued on, armed only with a Colt.45.   He managed to link up with a Dutch Jew named Joop Piller,  living in the town of Emst,  and they built a network designed to hide, protect, and eventually smuggle downed airmen out of Holland.

By operating covertly and passively, members of the Dutch Resistance were able to function without attracting undue attention. This allowed them to organize their cells, gauge the German counterintelligence threat, and establish information networks. The private telephone  was their primary means of communication, and they always used nicknames. In face-to-face meetings, masks were often worn to ensure security.

The Dutch Resistance command and control hierarchy was decentralized and compartmented.  Members only knew the members in their own group. The creation of small groups by individual Dutchmen with no outside links was widespread.  Some of these groups' activities would never be known, because many of their members were captured and executed by the Germans.

 The following link will take you to a very good post of some Dutch Resistance members names and pictures.  A good number of them died for their activities. Pictures Of Dutch Resistance Members.


The Underground Press



















Initially, the Resistance used leaflets and the underground newspapers as a means to enlist new members and raise money.

Underground newspapers were helpful, especially in areas where the telephone lines were monitored and the use of radio transmitters was too dangerous because of German direction-finding operations.  These newspapers helped counterbalance  the Nazi propaganda and the German-controlled media.

Almost as soon as the German occupation began, anti-Nazi leaflets began to circulate.  Photographs from the war period  show such anti-Nazi newspapers as "DeUnion" being openly distributed on city streets despite the obvious danger.  By 1943, the underground newspapers had attained a combined circulation of nearly 500,000.  Although some of them appeared amateurish, they were still effective.  One such paper (a translation and transcription of daily BBC broadcasts) was produced by the Leegsma brothers who were working at The Hague.

Another newspaper which was also a two-man effort, that worked out of a hotel room in Grave.  Gerald Peijnenburg and a Dutch Jew, in hiding, wrote and copied "Young Netherlands".  Peijnenburg handled the distribution, and most of his copies were passed from person to person, which provided a small measure of security.


Major Resistance Organizations

 By the middle of 1944, there were four major Resistance organizations in Holland.  The groups did not coordinate their activities, unless help from one group to another was absolutely necessary. Generally speaking, the groups did not answer to a central headquarters.  They conducted their operations as they saw fit,  and members of the groups often did not know which organization they were part of.  Many did not learn the identity of their particular group until the war was over.

"Central Government Organizations For Help To People In Hiding" (LO) was the most important of the groups.  Its primary goal was the protection and exfiltration of onkerduikers.  Another activity centered around the coupons used by the Germans and the Dutch Nazi government to ration food and keep tabs on the population.  The LO made counterfeit coupons;  it also obtained authentic coupons from loyal Netherlands citizens who were in the employ of the Dutch Nazis.  Other groups conducted raids and robberies to steal authentic coupons from government agencies.  And some Dutch civilians gave up their own coupons to the "Central Government Organizations For Help To People In Hiding" (LO).

Besides keeping an eye on Dutch collaborators, local LO groups engaged in whatever resistance they could without endangering themselves.  Occasionally, the Leegsma family in The Hague was able to use its position in the police force to tip off the LO before the impending arrest of an onkerduiker would occur.  The family also was able to funnel genuine food coupons to the "Central Government Organizations For Help To People In Hiding" (LO).


The Eindhoven and Nijmegen Undergrounds

Some organizations, established locally by individual Dutchmen, operated with no formal, structured links to any other groups. In Eindhoven, a group known as the "Partisan Action Nederlands" (PAN) functioned along the lines of the KP but did not consider itself part of that organization.



















People of the Dutch resistance are helping the British to find and arrest German soldiers.


















PAN was founded by Hoynck van Papendrecnt. He had studied engineering at the Technical University in Delft until April 1943, when the Germans closed the Dutch universities and began to forcibly relocate the Dutch students to Germany as a manpower and a professional talent pool. Hoynck  van Papendrecht went into hiding and eventually moved to Eindhoven, where he established the PAN.  By June 1944,  the PAN had reached its full strength of 80 to 100 young men and women.  The PAN had several small cells operating in the small towns around Eindhoven.  These included the Group Sander,  named after its leader, which worked as a KP and LO subgroup.



















The headquarters of the resistance in Eindhoven (PAN) at Willemstraat with female members of the group.

Margarethe Kelder and her sister were members of the Group Sander.  They smuggled downed Allied airmen and Dutch onkerduikers to a crossing site on the Belgium border,  coordinating their activities with a Belgian Resistance group.  The female members of the PAN were primarily couriers,  but,  they were also valued intelligence collectors.  In early September 1944,  Margarethe Kelder and another female Resistance member were asked to go into the woods near Eindhoven to confirm the presence of a German antiaircraft battery. On the pretext of gathering mushrooms, they conducted their reconnaissance and, when confronted by German guards near the battery, were able to convince them of their innocence.


























Andree de Jongh.


The Belgian Comet Line, a network of around 1,000 people operating in Belgium and France, saved more than 800 downed Allied airmen in World War Two. It operated for three years, from 1941 to 1944. It had been the brainchild of a 24 year old woman,  Andree de Jongh,  a daughter of a Brussels schoolmaster.  She lived in a small flat near the Place Meiser in Brussels.

Her passion for the work, during the war, earned her the nickmame "Petit Cyclone". Her code name with the British was "Postman", but she was known to her London MI9 desk officer Airey Neave as "Dedee".  She had help from the many volunteers, from both her friends and family (including her parents, aunt and older sister) in the work of escorting downes Allied airmen to safety.

Betrayals and Nazi infiltrations led to hundreds of arrests and deaths. Andree de Jongh was caught when she was crossing the Pyrenees with Allied airmen, in January 1943.  During a subsequent interrogation,  one of the RAF fliers identified both his helpers and the Comet Line's safe houses, to the German Gestapo.

After the war, Andree de Jongh was made a Countess by the King of Belgium. In Great Britain, she was awarded the George Cross.

























Andree de Jongh, known as Dedee (pictured with her father).


At the age 17 years, Andree Dumon began by delivering messages for the Comet Line and carrying copies of "La Libre Belgique" newspaper, which had been banned and gone under­ground. Her  code name was "Nadine",  Andree Dumon soon went on gto smuggling the airmen to Paris or Valenciennes, by train.  The teenager calmly dealt with the German officers at the French border, as they examined the airmen's forged papers.  She was remembered for her "coolness of mind" and her smile, which she used to good advantage.  , Andree Dumon and her parents were arrested at their home, after an informant betrayed them to the Gestapo. She was 20 years old.

 Both Andree Dumon and Andree de Jongh spent nearly three years in prisons and concentration camps. When Germany surrendered in 1945,  they emerged from Mauthausen gravely ill and undernourished.  But many of their friends from the Comet Line did not survive the prison camps.  Andree Dumon's father was among them.  Many brave men and women risked their lives, and in some cases sacrificed them, to save the Allied Airmen.















Grandmother Andree Dumon.



















A street scene in the town of Eindhoven, Netherlands.  This picture was taken on September 19, 1944.  It shows the destruction of the German aerial bombing.  (Click on the picture to see a larger view).

Another "Partisan Action Nederlands" group in a town north of Eindhoven conducted sabotage operations. It put salt in gas and oil tanks of German vehicles and blew up railroad tracks, using smuggled explosives provided by mining engineers.
























A collaborater has been held within range by a German Luger pistol.


















Collaborators arrested by members of the so called PAN, accompied by civilians and boy scouts.

After D-Day, many members of the Dutch underground grew impatient and wanted to conduct more aggressive operations against the Germans. The PAN did so by launching raids against the 20- to 30-man German garrison at the Eindhoven airport on September 5, 1944.  It also began conducting a form of psychological warfare; PAN members would approach German soldiers they knew and try to persuade them of the hopelessness of Germany's situation and to surrender.  Some PAN members were reported by German soldiers and arrested.  The punishment for belonging to a Resistance organization was summary execution.

In June 1944,  the PAN set up its headquarters in a house in Eindhoven.  Hoynck Van Papendrecht had little contact with the other groups in the Eindhoven area, including the RVV, which numbered only three of four members, but he was aware of their existence. The PAN leader did conduct some joint activities with other groups when he felt the operational need for outside assistance.  One of his outside contacts was the KP leader in Rotterdam,  Jan van Bijnen,  whose nom de guerre was "Frank."  "Frank" was Van Pupendrecht's periodic source of weapons and explosives,  couriered by such women as Margerethe Kelder and her sister.



















A bombed hospital in the town Eindhoven. Even though the roofs were marked to clearly indicate that it was a hospital, it was bomed by the Germans.


To the east of Eindhoven,  in the small town of Helmond,  a KP Resistance group was led by Johan Raaymaerkers,  a former Dutch artillery captain who was a technical engineer and owned his own factory.   Hans Bertels,  a member of the group, began distributing an underground newspaper in 1941 in the Helmond area. Bertels's contact was a man named Knaapen,  who provided him with the newspapers and occasional operations orders.































September18,1944. For these German prisoners of war, it was the end.


In the town of Roermond, a small LO group consisting of only 15 members had its headquarters in a vault in the local cemetery.  Anya van Lyssens, later awarded the "Military Order of William" for her actions in the Resistance,  was a member. The group had a radio, with which it maintained contact with a Belgian Resistance group,and smuggled downed Allied airmen over the border. By September 1944,   the group was credited with saving the lives of 29 airmen.


OSS Involvement




















The Resistance organizations were part of the largely unknown story of the strategic OSS mission into occupied Holland. This story essentially began in May 1944, when Lt. Jan Laverge constituted the one-man Netherlands Section of Special Intelligence  of the OSS in London.  The American-born son of Dutch immigrent, he had been personally recruited for the job by Col. William Donovan. As planning progressed for the invasion of Europe, Lt. Col. De Vries, the chief of SI, asked Lt. Jan Laverge to develop a plan for using an OSS team to assist in the liberation of the Netherlands. On 25 May 1944, Laverge submitted his preliminary plan, which called for two officers and three enlisted men with associated vehicles and communications equipment.





















Following the Allied invasion of occupied France, Lt. Jan Laverge looked forward to having a chance to operate an OSS mission in Holland similar to the OSS mission, codenamed Sussex, which had operated in France. In July 1944, the Netherlands Section came under the control of SI's Continental Division. De Vries ordered resubmission of plans for the liberation of occupied countries, and Laverge reviewed the initial work. The OSS team designated for Holland would come under the control of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) military mission to the Netherlands. The OSS team grew to six officers and eight to 10 enlisted men.

Later that month, Lt. Jan Laverge consulted with the BI and used its contributions for the final plan, submitted
on August 5, 1944. Both the BI and the OSS approved the mission, which was given the codename Melanie. The Minister of War in the Dutch exile government also approved the mission, which was to gather intelligence and focus on "transmitting information obtained from the Dutch service's intelligence nets, trying to recruit agents, and extending Dutch nets into Germany."

After Lt. Jan Laverge got the green light for the mission,  he began recruiting soldiers for the team. He choose men he knew and had worked with before in England.  He also began building up his team to ensure maximum self-sufficiency.  In addition to his radio operators and two Dutch BI analysts, he recruited an American Army mechanic, a radio repairman, and a Dutch-American major with no previous intelligence experience.  It was his thinking that the presence of a Major on the team would provide Lt. Jan Laverge with enough rank to obtain the needed resources.

When the Melanie advance team arrived in Normandy, it reported to the SHAEF G2 Forward. On September 9, 1944, Lt. Jan Laverge met with a Major Krick of the SHAEF G2. Major Krick apparently offered little or no guidance to Lt. Laverge as to Melanie's intended intelligence-gathering priorities and requirements. According to Lt. Jan Laverge's report to his OSS superior,   Major Krick only made suggestions.

Lt. Laverge took the suggestions and  developed them into the following requirements:
    * German unit composition and positions behind the Siegfried Line.
    * Location of enemy headquarters of any kind and names of Germans located there.
    * Locations of the planning and archival sections of German industrial interests.
    * Information on "controlling personalities" at all levels of the Reich.
    * Locations of command, control, and communications nodes.

The OSS team was attached to British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery's 21st Army Group, and ordered to report. In early September, Lt. Jan Laverge reported in at Montgomery's headquarters. He also moved his team to the Palace Hotel in Brussels, in preparation for the deployment into Holland.


Operation Market-Garden

























Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery.


In early September 1944, Field Marshal Montgomery, seeking to maintain the momentum of the Allied breakout from Normandy, conceived an operation to outflank the German "West Wall" defensive line. Encouraged by Ultra SIGINT intercepts which portrayed a disintegrating German Army, Field Marshal Montgomery persuaded Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight Eisenhower that his bold plan of forcing a narrow corridor through Holland and establishing a bridgehead across the Rhine River into northern Germany's Ruhr Valley industrial complex, held the promise of bringing about a German collapse by the end of 1944.

Field Marshal Montgomery's "Operation Market-Garden" had two parts. He proposed dropping the First Allied Airborne Army to seize seven canal and river bridges in Holland as well as the bridge across the lower Rhine at the Dutch town of Arnhem - the "Market" portion of Montgomery's operation. Simultaneously, the British XXX Armored Corps would rapidly advance 60 miles along a narrow road corridor crossing the captured bridges to link up with the airborne forces in Arnhem - the "Garden" portion. The operation began on September 17.

The Melanie mission,, with no prior coordination with the British XXX Armored Corps, deployed into Holland, crossing over the Albert Canal and reached Eindhoven on September 21, 1944.  The Melanie team established its base of operations in a house at No. 2 Vestdijk Street.














The Dutch telephone network was a vital communications link between Melanie and the Resistance cells scattered throughout the country. Using a TR-4 wireless telegraph radio set, the team's radio operators established contact with the OSS SI section in Paris.  In addition to the TR-4, the team used a TR-1 for local communications with the Dutch Resistance groups in the Market-Garden area of operations.

Even though the team was attached to the 21st Army Group, it apparently did not provide intelligence to Field Marshall Montgomery's G2.  Instead, its reporting channel was directly to Paris and the OSS Continental Division of SI.  The exclusion of the 21st Army Group G2 from the intelligence reporting chain probably stemmed from the sensitive, compartmented nature of all OSS missions. The team had no contact with the 101st Airborne Division, whose Market-Garden objective was the seizure of Eindhoven and vital bridges nearby. The only American paratrooper the OSS team saw was a lone GI who wandered past the house one day and asked for a cigarette.

Lt. Jan Laverge quickly made contact with Arie Tromp, the chief of the Eindhoven Resistance.   With Arie Tromp's assistance, Lt. Jan Laverge recruited four Dutch civilians to work as interpreters and telephone operators.   A Resistance member named A. Jongbloed was employed as the mission's intelligence and liaison officer with Dutch civilian authorities in Eindhoven.  The OSS team used the Dutch telephone system to make contact with various Resistance groups throughout Holland.  This reporting network began yielding excellent information almost immediately.


























A Jedburgh with full operational equipment.


In addition to the Melanie operation, which was supposed to provide strategic intelligence on the situation throughout Holland, the OSS/SOE Jedburgh teams deployed with each Allied airborne division during Market-Garden. The Jedburgh teams worked closely with their respective division commanders and staff. These teams performed civil affairs and unconventional warfare missions in much the same manner as latter-day special forces units do, but they were primarily concerned with obtaining tactical intelligence provided by Resistance members.

During Market-Garden, intelligence supplied by the various Resistance networks, because of its non-compartmented nature, was passed through the Jedburgh teams to the various tactical commanders. The commanders received intelligence on the composition and disposition of German forces, as well as information on terrain and the conditions of the bridges. Once the paratroopers were on the ground, this information flow continued. Some of the Resistance cells were aware to some extent of Market-Garden before its implementation, but the decentralized nature of the underground network guaranteed that not everyone would know the time and place of the attack. As Allied parachutes began blossoming, those previously unaware of the operation reacted by mobilizing their cells and recovering arms caches.


















Some Resistance members carried out independent actions during the operation. Others actively sought out airborne soldiers and attached themselves to any unit that would take them. In some cases where their loyalties were suspect, the Resistance members were vetted by the Jedburgh teams. Once this was done, they were farmed out to different units as their need arose.

Jedburgh Team Claude, attached to the British lst Airborne Division, was too small to conduct effective operations. One four-man team per brigade would have been enough, but not one team for the entire division. The splitting of this team had disastrous consequences, placing the entire responsibility for the vetting and administration of the available Resistance on the junior member of Team Claude, Lt. Knottenbelt.

The British plan for using the Resistance fell apart after Col. Barlow, the officer in charge of civil affairs and of working with the Resistance in the Arnhem area, was killed.  Dutch naval commander Wolters was attached to the British division, but his stated mission was focused on Dutch civil affairs after the liberation of Arnhem. His unplanned, ad hoc actions during the fighting demonstrated his considerable abilities; if his responsibilities had been broadened before D-Day, he could have been even more effective.




















Anhiem bridge.


The communications failures suffered by Market forces, especially the lst Airborne Division, are legendary. Team Claude's loss of communications occurred because the team carried ONLY ONE RADIO for the operation, which was lost during the initial drop on D-Day. Team Edward's inability to communicate with Team Claude and the physical isolation of the two teams, prevented any clear assessment of the situation at Arnhem.

Market-Garden was one of the most serious intelligence failures of the war.  Critiques of the operation have focused on the overly optimistic interpretations of SIGINT as well as on the failure of the planners to pay attention to airborne reconnaissance indications of recent German armored reinforcements in the Arnhem area.



















Operation Planning.


Similarly, the operational planners, in their haste to meet Montgomery's deadlines, paid too little attention to route, terrain, and weather assessments. These assessments, moreover, suffered from insufficient basic intelligence information. Selections of drop zones, especially at Arnhem, were ill-considered, and estimates of the road system's ability to support the armored column were critically flawed, although this latter shortcoming was as much a planning failure as it was an intelligence failure.

The Dutch Resistance was not alerted to the Arnhem drop because British intelligence believed the Germans had penetrated their Dutch networks. If the British had heeded word from their agents in Arnhem, they would have been alerted to the presence of two enemy panzer divisions.




















German Small Arms.


After Market-Garden, the Melanie mission continued to collect military, economic, and industrial intelligence. A detailed report that was dated December 14, 1944, provided the specifications on a Mauser small-arms factory in the town of Oberndorf, Germany.  The team also provided reports regarding the German atrocities committed against Allied prisoners and Netherlands civilians.

*****


























Joop Westerweel, a schoolteacher executed by the Nazis for helping Jews escape from the Netherlands.


Joop Westerweel was a teacher in a progressive school. he helped organize an escape route for young Jews that were  fleeing the Netherlands during the German occupation.  From December 1942 through 1944, his underground group smuggled between 150 and 200 Jews to Belgium, on to France, and from there into Switzerland and Spain. 

There was a school in Bilthoven called the Werkplaats Kinder Gemeenschap (Children's Community Workshop). The founder was Kees Boeke, who was well known at the time in educational circles all over western Europe for his progressive ideas. Kees Boeke was a Quaker, and his school was notable for its idealistic principles. Photograph of Joop Westerweel, c. 1942 It was run somewhat like a kibbutz, forming its own community, and growing its own food. The people who taught there did so out of moral conviction and idealism, rather than to make money, because the school paid its staff very little. The head teacher was Joop Westerweel, who later became famous in Holland for his resistance against the Germans.

One of the principles of the school was that the pupils could have a say about our teaching and how we ran the school's daily life. In this spirit, a student stood up one day in 1939, and told us that when he came to school in the mornings he passed a house where he saw teenagers hanging around, some up in the trees - all of them very bored. That day he got off his bicycle to talk with them. They told him they were Jewish refugees from Germany who had been brought to Holland by the Youth Aliyah movement. They had a nice place to live, but they had no books, no school, and nothing much to do. Our student asked us, "Could we possibly arrange to bring these children to the Werkplaats for school?"





















Joop Westerweel, said, "Of course! They must come!" Kees Boeke rented a special classroom building for these twenty-five Jewish children, and pretty soon they were coming to our school every morning, returning to their Youth Aliyah house only late in the afternoon.

Captured by the Nazis and imprisoned in the Vught concentration camp, Westerweel was tortured but refused to reveal his network of contacts.  He was executed on August 1, 1944.

*****

The unleashing of German secret weapons such as jet aircraft and the V-2 rocket made information about these weapons critical. Melanie responded by providing information on the location of V-2 launching sites, with detailed sketches. Information on industrial infrastructure was also provided. A report dated 3 March 1945 stated that V-2 parts were being manufactured in the Croecke textile factory in Hohenlimburg, Germany.

In late December, coinciding with the German attack through the Ardennes, Melanie developed intelligence indicating a secondary, supplementary German attack across the Maas River. Maj. Van der Gracht reported to his superior, Philip Horton, that in the period of a few days more than 30 German commandos wearing British uniforms had been captured in Eindhoven, some only a few blocks from the team's quarters. Van der Gracht also reported, however, that Eindhoven had received numerous V-2 attacks "with some accuracy." The threat became so ominous that Van der Gracht made plans for the destruction of those files which could not be evacuated.




























Field Marshall Herman Goering.


On February 8, 1945, Melanie reported that Field Marshal Goering had established his headquarters in a train with three coaches at the Niederaula train station and that he had been there for several months. Dutch intelligence agents were routinely able to report the locations of German regimental and higher headquarters along with descriptions of vehicle and uniform markings. Reports on German units were usually able to identify the name of the commander and sometimes what decorations he wore. This type of information came from underground sources living in the occupied towns and villages.

SI also tasked Melanie to conduct and submit battle damage assessment reports on the results of Allied bombing raids in the Netherlands. Again, such reports could only be obtained through eyewitness accounts provided by Dutch Resistance members and Melanie agents.


Capture Of Lt. Gen. Hanns Rauter

On March 6, 1945, the Dutch Resistance unwittingly ambushed a high-ranking SS officer.





















Members of the Dutch Resistance who were attempting to hijack a staff-car in Apeldoorn, Holland. Lt. Gen. Hanns Rauter was riding in a SS car that was filled with food destined for the Luftwaffe (the German air force) based near Apeldoorn on March 6, 1945, when some young members of the Dutch Resistance ambushed the car.

The closing days of the war had left much of occupied Holland close to famine conditions, and the guerrillas were determined to co-opt the food. They did not know General Rauter was in the car when it was attacked; Lt. Gen. Rauter was shot during the attempted hijack, but, he lived. 


















Lt. Gen. Hanns Rauter's car.


In retaliation, the SS proceeded to round up and execute 263 Dutchmen, some of whom were Resistance fighters who were already being held in prison. During the following week, the German SS executed 263 Dutch citizens in retaliation.

Lt. Gen. Hanns Rauter was head of the SS in Holland and answered directly to Heinrich Himmler, the SS commander. In 1941, during a strike that broke out in Amsterdam among Dutch workers to protest the round-up of almost 400 Dutch Jews,

General Hauter ordered the SS and German troops to open fire on the strikers, killing 11. The Jews, whom the strikers were trying to protect, were deported to Buchenwald. All of the nearly 400 were dead by the fall.
























Gen. Rauter was handed over to the Dutch government by the British, and was tried by a special court in Den Haag which sentenced him to death.  This death sentence was confirmed by a higher court on January 12, 1949.  A film was recorded of his trial, and it shows that during his trial Rauter denied being guilty of war crimes.

He was executed by firing squad near Scheveningen on March 24, 1949. The place of his grave is a state secret.

*****


A December 24, 1944 memorandum from Lt. Jan Laverge states that the team had recruited nine Dutch citizens.  Five of them were to be observers and four would train as wireless telegraph operators.They were trained in Eindhoven to penetrate the pertiGerman lines and collect pertinent information.  Armed with only their wits and the TR-1 radio,  these Netherlanders tried,  with varying degrees of success , to accomplish their assigned missions. From September 1944 until May 1945, several secondary missions were conducted. Each included at least one agent.  These missions involved contacting various Resistance groups and establishing radio contact between the groups and Melanie for intelligence-gathering purposes.  Some of the agents did not survive their assignments.



















Members of the Eindhoven Resistance with troops of the US 101st Airborne in front of Eindhoven cathedral during Operation Market Garden, September 1944.

Operations in occupied Holland were extremely difficult and dangerous for Melanie's Dutch agents.  After an OSS bureaucrat had recommended shutting down the operation because of a perceived lack of results,  Lt. Jan Laverge responded angrily:  "Frankly, if you knew about conditions in Holland like we do here, you don't see how the hell those people [Dutch agents] can accomplish what we are asking." 

Tehe Melanie Mission continued in Eindhoven for the duration of the war. Besides obtaining intelligence on the strategic and tactical military situation, the team provided economic, political, and social intelligence on large and small urban areas and on rural communities. Melanie also put together a database on Dutch collaborators.

From March 25 to 31, 1945, the Melanie mission sent 251 reports, messages, and maps/sketches to the OSS/ETO SI section. From September 1944 to April 1945, Melanie sent approximately 3,200 courier reports and 750 cable messages to the OSS SI section in Paris. According to an afteraction report written by the SHAEF G-2 in 1945 evaluating Dutch intelligence production and reporting, the Melanie mission "supplied more reports for SHAEF's Daily Digest than any other OSS mission from September 1944 to May 1945.

Despite its achievements, Melanie has hardly been mentioned in most OSS histories. The only sources on Melanie are surviving participants and the declassified OSS records at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. These records include daily situation reports, financial accounting records, operational reports, and debriefs of Dutch agents sent behind the lines. There are important gaps in the records; some documents have been pulled from the files and reclassified.

But the SHAEF G2, at least, gave some credit where it was justly due, when he reported that Melanie provided the most accurate and complete intelligence picture for its assigned area of any intelligence operation during the war. As he indicated, Melanie's efforts and the cooperation and sacrifices of its Dutch Resistance agents contributed substantially to Allied intelligence operations in Holland at a crucial stage.


*****


The Bunker Drama

























Cell 115


In January 1944 in Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch the "Bunker Drama" took place.
.
A German woman, who was being kept prisoner in the Camp, provided all kind of information about the other women prisoners, to the camp leaders. By doing this, she hoped that she would be released sooner. The other women in the barracks warned her to stop it. After a final warning, the women cut her hair.

The leader of the women in the barracks, is locked up for this in the camp prison (Bunker).  Ninety women from her barracks wrote their name and number on a list in the camp administration to protests against this act.

Two days later, on January 15,  all of these women were brought to the Bunker.  74 women were locked up in one Cell: Cell 115.  The size of the cell is about 9 square meters. Because the cell is full and there is absolutely no room left in this cell,  the other 16 women were placed in another cell - Cell 117.

In Cell 115, the women began to  panic. There was no fresh air and the cell was very hot.  More and more women became unconscious due to the lack of oxygen.

On Sunday January 16, after 14 hours, the the door of the cell is opened.  Only 64 of the 74 women are still alive. Ten of the women died while standing upright.

The ten women didn't survive the night:
Helena Bagmeijer-Krant
Nelly de Bode
Maartje den Braber
Lamberta Buiteman-Huijsmans
Anna Gooszen
Mina Hartogs-Samson
Johanna van den Hoek
Lammerdina Holst
Antoinette Janssen
Huiberdina Witte-Verhagen

This story soon became known outside the camp.  Many world newspapers and all kinds of resistance papers wrote about this drama. The German Army was very annoyed that the news had leaked.  The camp commander Grünewald was discharged and sent to the Russian front were he was killed in battle.

*****

"Robert" Rene Van Muylem

























Rene Van Muylem was born in the province of Antwerp to a father with strong Flemish nationalist beliefs, Rene Van Muylem set himself up in business as a hair dresser, later moving to Cologne.  Bombardments by the RAF destroyed his business there and he returned to Belgium.  On the advice of his younger brother, a member of the "Black Brigade", René went to the offices of the VNV (Vlaams National Verbond) in Antwerp, to see about employment as a propagandist in the German labor camps where there were thousands of Belgian workers.  It was probably at the VNV HQ where he met a German agent of the Abwehr who recruited him into their attempts to infiltrate the escape lines.

Abwehr officials in Belgium conceived of a plan whereby they would create a false escape line in Antwerp using innocent people who wanted to assist the Allies. 


























The false line came to be known as the KLM line.  Some Resistance members were taken in by the scheme, including Jean Portzenheim, in charge of one of the sectors of safe houses for Service EVA.   The Abwehr even paid some of Jean Portzenheim’s expenses.  But the Abwehr’s objective was not just to catch Allied fliers and their helpers. Probably more important to it was the opportunity to extract valuable intelligence from the fliers who thought they were in friendly hands — information on the airmen’s units, bases, locations of airfields, their planes’ armament and radar, where they were shot down, and their helpers.

A letter written after the war by 2nd Lt. Robert Giles of Spindale, North Carolina, describes how he and another flier were guided “to a rather luxurious apartment where we were ‘entertained’ by a prosperous-looking businessman and his wife.  This man was supposedly the head of the organization in Antwerp.”  Another man “who spoke excellent English with an American accent” conducted them to another apartment where they were “told that we would have to be questioned some to finally establish our identity as American airmen” and not “English-speaking German flyers”.  “The questioning was conducted very skillfully.”  Still believing they were going to be taken to France, the two fliers were guided up the street to another building.  “We entered a building and there we were in Gestapo headquarters in Antwerp.”

Rene Van Muylem is a very interesting an complex character. 'Robert' was recognized among the Antwerp resistance leadership as being a parachuted agent from London and the head of an important escape line known as the KLM. Of the 235 airmen captured by the Antwerp Abw III/f, 177 airmen were credited to his efforts - although in his interrogation report, he modestly reported the figure was only 176.

When Belgium was liberated in September 1944, Rene Van Muylem  fled to Germany, then Austria.  He was returned to France by the Germans in 1945, possibly for sabotage assignments. He managed to get a job in a United States Army mess.  But one of the American airmen (2nd Lt Robert Hoke of the 388 Bomber Group) that Van Muylem had captured spotted him there and alerted his superiors. He was arrested in Paris in 1945 while working as a bar tender at Camp Lucky Strike. This was one of the USAAF repatriation centers and was where, unfortunately for him, he was recognized by one of the airmen he betrayed.

Rene Van Muylem  was sent back to Belgium, and thoroughly debriefed. He was very candid in his interrogation which has a wealth of information about his activities and particularly about the character of his resistance colleagues.

He had great respect for the genuine patriots he came into contact with and disdained those he considered involved in resistance work only for mercenary reasons.

Eventually, he faced a trial together with one of his women associates who had been involved in picking up airmen at the Dutch border and taking them to Antwerp. Despite his betrayal of many Belgians saboteurs and allied airmen, even his prosecutor admitted he had always behaved as a gentleman and had protected most of his 'duped' safe-house keepers from arrest by the Germans. He was executed executed May 29, 1948. Standing before the firing post, he asked the firing squad to hurry up and get it over with.


The Jewish Ghetto Police

Jewish Ghetto Police also known as the Jewish Order Service and referred to by the Jews as the Jewish Police, were the auxiliary police units organized in the Jewish ghettos of Europe by local Judenrat councils under orders of occupying German Nazis.



















Members of the Judendienstordnung did not have official uniforms, often wearing just an identifying armband, and were not allowed to carry firearms. They were used by the Germans primarily for securing the deportation of other Jews to the concentration camps.

The Jewish ghetto policemen were Jews who usually had little prior association  with the communities they oversaw (especially after the roundups and deportations to extermination camps began), and who could be relied upon to follow German orders.


Operation Chowhound

On April 29, 1945, aircraft of No 153 Squadron and 622 Squadron of RAF Bomber Command, began dropping food parcels from a height of 400 feet to the starving Dutch civilians.






















In the cold winter of 44/45, the 'Hunger Winter' as the Dutch call it, northern Holland and the heavily populated cities in Western Holland was still under German occupation.

Around 18,000 of the elder, sick and young had died through sickness and lack of sufficient food. Winston Churchill had written on April 10th, 'I fear we may soon be in the presence of a great tragedy'.

In Amsterdam, residents tore out the floors, window frames and doors of the houses which were left empty after the Jews were deported to the East and used the wood to fuel the fires in their unheated homes. The first food drop (284 bags) was over Ypenburg, near the Hague, subsequent drops were on the Dundigt Race course.


























Arthur Seyss-Inquart.


Before the food-drop operation began an agreement was reached whereby German anti-aircraft units would not fire on low flying aircraft dropping food. This was agreed to by the then Reich Commissioner for the Netherlands, Artur Seyss-Inquart, who was later found guilty of participating in the deportation of Jews. (He was hanged at Nuremberg on October 16, 1946)






















The Cost Of Dutch Liberation

The liberation of Holland cost the lives of over 50,000 Allied soldiers.  Altogether 4,500 Dutch soldiers died for their country as did 258 POWs who died in German prison camps.  At sea, a total of 1,500 Dutch sailors lost their lives and 104,000 Dutch Jews were exterminated. Some 23,000 citizens died in air-raids and over 5,000 died in concentration camps. Of the half million men transported to Germany as slave labour, 30,000 never returned. Executions and massacres claimed over 2,800 victims, 19 of whom were women. In all, 237,300 Netherlanders perished during the Nazi occupation.

This does not include the 10,000 Dutch pro-Nazis who died fighting on the German side. About 25,000 Dutchmen were pro-Nazi and fought for Germany. Although many Dutchmen fought bravely on the Allied side it is a sad fact that ther were more Dutchmen going into battle wearing the field grey uniform of Germany than in the British khaki.

The encylopedia Britanica says: "There can be no real statistical measurement of the human and material cost of World War II. The monetary cost to governments involved has been estimated at more than $1,000,000,000,000. This enormous figure does not and can not represent the human misery, deprivation, and suffering, the dislocation of peoples, and of economic life, or the sheer physical destruction of property, that World War II involved".


German Theft In Holland

The loot the Germans transported back to the Reich from Holland was staggering:

    * 13,786 metal working machines
    * 2,729 textile machines
    * 18,098 electric motors
    * 358 printing presses
    * 31 dredgers
    * over 7,000 barges
    * 90,000 lengths of railway line and a half million sleepers
    * over 60,000 motor cars, 40,000 trucks and 25,000 motor bikes
    * 154,647 kilos of Dutch gold disappeared into the Reichsbank's safes in Berlin
    * 320,000 cows, 472,036 pigs and 114,220 horses.

A total of 346 works of art were also stolen including 27 Rembrandts, 12 Hals, 47 Steens, 40 Rubens and 12 Van Goghs. Most of these paintings were recovered after the war.