Tag Archives: Utrecht

The executions on July 9,1942.

On 9 July 1942, nine members of the resistance group De Oranjewacht, ‘the Orange guard'(Orange is the national colour of the Netherlands and the name of the Royal family) were shot in the Fort near Rijnauwen,Utrecht, the Netherlands . Two trials were conducted against the resistance group and nine members were sentenced to death in both trials. On the same day, two so called Engelandvaarders,(England farers) Jan Stam and Petrus Antonius Ravelli were also shot.

The group. De Oranjewacht, consisted of nine members. It was one of the first resistance groups to be captured by the Nazis during WWII. That was in December 1940. They were imprisoned until that terrible July 9, 1942, the day they were executed. One of the members of this group was the Arnhemmer Piet Hoefsloot.

When he was arrested, convicted and executed, he left behind a wife and eleven children. He was then 49 years old. The youngest was so small that she never really knew her father. Only now, decades later, does she get a picture of him through stories about her father. A number of the eleven children at the time are still alive, all well into their eighties and over nineties. Nevertheless, they were all present at Fort bij Rijnauwen to commemorate their father together with other family members. The youngest daughter and two of the other daughters spoke. One read the farewell letter that father Piet wrote to his wife and children a few hours before his execution from his cell in the prison on Gansstraat. The other daughter read a poem entitled, “Saying Goodbye.” A beautiful flower arrangement was laid (see photo) and this intimate ceremony was concluded with a short moment of silence and the common prayer of the Our Father aloud. A photo of the eleven children was left at the memorial stone, as if Father had reunited with his children. Piet Hoefsloot is buried at Moscowa cemetery in Arnhem.

The other victims.

Frans Heinekamp.Born on October 13, 1898 in Arnhem
Executed on 9 July 1942 in Utrecht, Fort Rijnauwen.

Johan Dons: Born on February 26, 1915 in Utrecht
Executed on 9 July 1942 in Utrecht, Fort Rijnauwen.

Evert van den Berg: Born on September 20, 1915 in Hengelo
Executed on 9 July 1942 in Utrecht, Fort Rijnauwen

Hendrik Marinus Emanuel Pieter Maertens: Born on July 20, 1908 in Rotterdam
Executed on 9 July 1942 in Utrecht, Fort Rijnauwen.

Leonardus Lambertus Twijnstra: Born on March 18, 1904 in Leeuwarderadeel
Executed on 9 July 1942 in Utrecht, Fort Rijnauwen.

Petrus Walter Gerardus van de Weijer:Born on October 9, 1889 in Utrecht
Executed on 9 July 1942 in Utrecht, Fort Rijnauwen.

George Hendrik van der Ploeg: Born on October 26, 1889 in Vlissingen
Executed on 9 July 1942 in Utrecht, Fort Rijnauwen.

Johan Herman Jacobus Boerrigter: Born on February 13, 1906 in Djokjakarta, Dutch East Indies(Indonesia)
Executed on 9 July 1942 in Utrecht, Fort Rijnauwen.

During the war around 1700 Dutch men and women who tried to reach freedom in England, over land or by sea, were given the honorary name: Engelandvaarders (Lit. England-farers).

Jan Stam, born in 1916 in the Dutch East Indies, had been a 2nd lieutenant in the artillery in the May days of 1940. He was married and father of one child. In March 1942 the Ravelli couple moved in with them. Peter Antonius Ravelli (1918) was a 2nd lieutenant in the Royal Dutch East Indies Army. For unknown reasons he was in the Netherlands.
Together, both men decided to make an attempt to go to England. In France, however, they were arrested and brought back to the Netherlands. First they were imprisoned in the House of Detention in Scheveningen, then in the prison in Utrecht.
They were tried by the Feldgericht Kommandierenden Generals und Befehlshabers im Luftgau Holland, and sentenced to death. The death penalty by shooting was carried out on 9 July 1942 in Fort Rijnauwen. Ravelli’s widow gave birth to their child a few months later.

These men make me proud to be Dutch. Many looked away and did nothing, these men decided to stand up against an evil regime and paid the ultimate price.

sources

https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/thema/Fusillade%20in%20Fort%20bij%20Rijnauwen%20op%209%20juli%201942

Stam, Jan

Ankie Stork- The Stork who delivered 35 Jewish children.

Ankie Stork was a Dutch resistance fighter during the German occupation of the Netherlands. She saved thirty-five Jewish children from the Nazis by hiding them in several locations the town of Nijverdal during World War II. She acted as part of Utrechts Kindercomité,(Utrecht Children Committee) a Dutch resistance group based in Utrecht.

Ankie was a member of the Hengelo manufacturing family, the daughter of Johan Charles Stork, the director of the Koninklijke Stoombleekerij in Nijverdal.
She became a lecturer and spokesperson after the war. She continued to reside at two residences in Enschede and The Hague until shortly before her death. She died in Enschede on November 23, 2015, at the age of 93.
Her father and brother,Piet, had tried to escape to England at the start of the occupation of the Netherlands, but were arrested. After they were released ,they turned their home into centre of resistance and also a hiding place for Jews.
In 1942 Ankie started to study social geography. She had to end her studies quite soon after she started because she refused to sign the Loyalty declaration, which was a declaration pledging loyalty to the German occupier.

In 1943 her cousin Anne Maclaine Pont asked her to join the resistance by starting to sell copies of “Het lied der achttien dooden” (the song of the 18 dead) by Jan Campert in order to fund the resistance.
Later on with help from others like the Pastor Hendrikus Berkhof, who had warned about the dangers of Nazism during his sermons, to find hiding places for Jewish children, she found places for these children in the eastern rural parts of the Netherlands.
In May 1944 she was caught and arrested but was released after 6 weeks due to lack of evidence.
Because of her and her helpers 35 Jewish children survived the war.

Sources

https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn44496

https://peoplepill.com/people/ankie-stork/

https://dirkdeklein.net/2018/01/12/jan-campert-the-song-of-the-eighteen-dead-a-ww2-hero/

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Heinz Sommerfeld-Transport Ek no. 1458 (28. 09. 1944, Terezín -> Auschwitz)

Heinz

Around this time of year many 17 year old kids are getting ready for school exams. And although they may think it is unfair that they have to sit for hours and hours, to do their exams(I know I thought it was unfair). They don’t actually realize how lucky they are.

Education, even though it is a basic human right.it is not a certainty and it should be seen as a privilege when it is given to you.

I am sure Heinz Sommerfeld would have loved to have done his exams when he was 17, but he never got the chance. His biggest worry was staying alive, and because of an evil regime he did not succeed in that either.

He was born in Berlin on March 26th, 1927. On January 5th, 1939, aged 11, he  came to the Netherlands as a refugee without his parents on a  Kindertransport. (children’s transport)

Kinder

When he arrived in the Netherlands he was first in an orphanage in Amsterdam, but in November 1939 he was put in foster care with the Lipschits family in Maastricht . However a few months after the Nazis invaded the Netherlands he was moved again to an orphanage, this time in Utrecht.

In February 1942 he was deported to Westerbork. On January 20th, 1944 he was put on the train to Theresienstadt, from where he was deported to Auschwitz on September 28th, 1944 on transport 1458. A total of 2499 persons were registered on that transport. Heinz was one of them.

The train arrived in Auschwitz on September 29th,1944. What happened to the other 2498 I don’t know, but Heinz was murdered in the gas chambers upon arrival.

He was murdered not because he was bad but because he was perceived to be different, He was Jewish that was enough for the Nazis to kill him.

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Jules Frank- Murdered in Sobibor.

Jules Frank

Like Anne Frank, Jules also kept a diary but his was never published. It is on display in a museum in Utrecht in the Netherlands.

On April 15th,1943  Jules and his wife Flora Frank-van Beek picked up their suitcases and left for Amsterdam at 9.00 AM. Not out of free will but they were forced to go.

The day before they left ,Jules wrote one more entry in his diary it said:

“Will we ever return to our blessed and beloved Fatherland where we received so much love and good, God will give it”

He knew he was Jewish and was proud to be Jewish, but he also felt Dutch and was a great admirer of the Royal family. He collected a lot of things related to the house of Orange.

Jules and his wife never returned. So many of their neighbors had offered help,and shelter. They could have found hiding places and would have been safe, maybe even until after the war. But Jules did want to be a bother to anyone and remained in his own house.

 

A home where he would dink a cup of tea with his neighbors when they came to visit. But on the 14th of April 1943 on their 28th wedding anniversary Jules and Flora were told they had to report to the Authorities in Amsterdam.

Exactly one month later both of them were murdered in Sobibor. A Butcher  and his wife who for some reason had become a threat to society. I say some reason, but there really wasn’t one. They were Jewish and due to  a sick and twisted ideology what deemed them unworthy of life, they died.

A teacup and a saucer is still there as a reminder that Jules Frank and his wife once lived.

Cup of tea

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Sources

En toen nu

Joods Monument

 

 

The child is no more

kind

The biblical verse Genesis 37-30 has several translation from “the boy is not there” to “And he returned unto his brethren, and said, The child is not; and I, whither shall I go?” But for te title of this blog I used the literal translation of the version of the text which can be found on a plaque which can be found on the facade of  the central Israeli orphanage in Utrecht, the Netherlands.”The child is no more” because it is the most fitting translation for this story, although it should be children rather then child.

The orphanage was run by former Jewish Dutch Gold medal winning Gymnast, Judikje Simons and her husband Bernard Salomon Themans. Judikje had been part of the 1928 Olympics gymnast team.

At the start of 1942 the orphanage had about 50 orphans and a further 30 Jewish children of parents who had sent them to the Netherlands from Germany after the Kristallnacht, in the hope they’d be safe there.

weedhuid

Judikje and her husband also lived  in the orphanage together with their own two children,5 year old daughter Sonja and 3 year old son Leon.. During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, the family was given a chance to escape deportation to the death camps, but Simons and her husband refused to leave the orphans.

Simons

In October 1942 the Nazis deported everyone from the orphanage. First they were sent to Westerbork and later they were deported to Sobibor.

The Simons-Themans family all were murdered in the Sobibor gas chambers on March 20,1943.

Nearly all of the children from the orphanage were killed in Sobibor as were the resident carers.

 

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Source

Joods Monument

The Dutch Pope

Pope

When you think of Popes you wouldn’t think that a small country like the Netherlands ever would produce a Pope. But yet it did.

Born as Adriaan Florensz Boeyens in Utrecht on March 2 1459. He would become thr  head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 9 January 1522 until his death on 14 September 1523.  He would be the only Dutchman so far to become pope, and was the last non-Italian pope until John Paul II, 455 years later.

He was designated the title Pope Adrian VI or also Hadrian VI. Adrian was resented by the Romans as an outsider. He took up the task of reforming the church. Pope Adrian VI took over from Pope Leo X, who had been Pope from 1513 to 1521.Pope Leo had left the papacy in chaos. The treasury was depleted by wars, construction, and private leisure activities.

Adrian chose to keep his birth name. Immediately, the stern theologian made sure that people understood . he was not the sovereign’s puppet. He embarked on a program of reformation to replenish the treasury by putting an end to unnecessary spending

Adrian VI tried to unite the Christians in a crusade against the Turks, he failed in this. Swiftly the Turks under Suleiman the Magnificent conquered Rhodes.

suleman

Adrian also underestimated the early stages of the Lutheran revolt. Adrian did condemn Luther as a heretic, but he took no defensive actions against the Lutheran movement. Ironically the country he was born in would later become one of the most Lutheran countries in Europe.

Adrian VI died in Rome on 14 September 1523, after one year, eight months and six days as pope. Most of his official papers were lost after his death.

Pope A

Donation

I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

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Sources

Papalartifacts.com

Britannica.com