Upcoming Events

There are no upcoming events at this time.

Categories

  • Archives (51)
  • False Documents (30)
  • Images (8)
  • Join the Resistance (71)
  • Memory (55)
  • Money (19)
  • Occupation (51)
  • People (45)
  • Postwar after effects (24)
  • research (5)
  • Routes (74)
  • Security (64)
  • Sources (24)
  • Stories (54)
  • Uncategorized (41)
  • Archives

  • March 2024 (2)
  • February 2024 (2)
  • January 2024 (2)
  • December 2023 (2)
  • November 2023 (2)
  • October 2023 (3)
  • September 2023 (2)
  • August 2023 (2)
  • July 2023 (2)
  • June 2023 (2)
  • May 2023 (2)
  • April 2023 (3)
  • March 2023 (2)
  • February 2023 (2)
  • January 2023 (2)
  • December 2022 (2)
  • November 2022 (2)
  • October 2022 (3)
  • September 2022 (2)
  • August 2022 (2)
  • July 2022 (2)
  • June 2022 (2)
  • May 2022 (2)
  • April 2022 (2)
  • March 2022 (2)
  • February 2022 (2)
  • January 2022 (2)
  • December 2021 (2)
  • November 2021 (2)
  • October 2021 (3)
  • September 2021 (2)
  • August 2021 (2)
  • July 2021 (2)
  • June 2021 (2)
  • May 2021 (3)
  • April 2021 (2)
  • March 2021 (2)
  • February 2021 (2)
  • January 2021 (2)
  • December 2020 (2)
  • November 2020 (3)
  • October 2020 (2)
  • September 2020 (2)
  • August 2020 (2)
  • July 2020 (2)
  • June 2020 (2)
  • May 2020 (3)
  • April 2020 (2)
  • March 2020 (2)
  • February 2020 (2)
  • January 2020 (2)
  • December 2019 (3)
  • November 2019 (2)
  • October 2019 (2)
  • September 2019 (2)
  • August 2019 (2)
  • July 2019 (2)
  • June 2019 (3)
  • May 2019 (2)
  • April 2019 (2)
  • March 2019 (2)
  • February 2019 (2)
  • January 2019 (2)
  • December 2018 (3)
  • November 2018 (2)
  • October 2018 (2)
  • September 2018 (2)
  • August 2018 (2)
  • July 2018 (3)
  • June 2018 (2)
  • May 2018 (2)
  • April 2018 (2)
  • March 2018 (2)
  • February 2018 (2)
  • January 2018 (2)
  • December 2017 (3)
  • November 2017 (2)
  • October 2017 (2)
  • September 2017 (2)
  • August 2017 (2)
  • July 2017 (2)
  • June 2017 (2)
  • May 2017 (3)
  • April 2017 (2)
  • March 2017 (2)
  • February 2017 (2)
  • January 2017 (2)
  • December 2016 (2)
  • November 2016 (3)
  • October 2016 (2)
  • September 2016 (2)
  • August 2016 (3)
  • July 2016 (2)
  • June 2016 (2)
  • May 2016 (2)
  • April 2016 (2)
  • March 2016 (3)
  • February 2016 (2)
  • January 2016 (2)
  • December 2015 (2)
  • November 2015 (2)
  • October 2015 (2)
  • September 2015 (3)
  • August 2015 (2)
  • July 2015 (2)
  • June 2015 (2)
  • May 2015 (2)
  • April 2015 (2)
  • March 2015 (3)
  • February 2015 (2)
  • January 2015 (2)
  • December 2014 (2)
  • November 2014 (2)
  • October 2014 (2)
  • September 2014 (3)
  • August 2014 (1)
  • July 2014 (3)
  • June 2014 (2)
  • May 2014 (2)
  • April 2014 (3)
  • March 2014 (2)
  • February 2014 (2)
  • January 2014 (2)
  • December 2013 (2)
  • November 2013 (2)
  • October 2013 (3)
  • September 2013 (2)
  • August 2013 (2)
  • July 2013 (2)
  • June 2013 (2)
  • May 2013 (2)
  • April 2013 (3)
  • March 2013 (3)
  • February 2013 (3)
  • January 2013 (3)
  • December 2012 (3)
  • November 2012 (3)
  • October 2012 (3)
  • September 2012 (3)
  • August 2012 (3)
  • July 2012 (3)
  • June 2012 (3)
  • May 2012 (3)
  • April 2012 (3)
  • March 2012 (3)
  • February 2012 (3)
  • January 2012 (3)
  • December 2011 (3)
  • November 2011 (3)
  • October 2011 (4)
  • September 2011 (3)
  • August 2011 (3)
  • July 2011 (3)
  • June 2011 (3)
  • May 2011 (3)
  • April 2011 (3)
  • March 2011 (3)
  • February 2011 (3)
  • January 2011 (3)
  • December 2010 (3)
  • November 2010 (3)
  • October 2010 (4)
  • September 2010 (3)
  • August 2010 (3)
  • July 2010 (3)
  • June 2010 (3)
  • May 2010 (3)
  • April 2010 (4)
  • March 2010 (3)
  • February 2010 (4)
  • January 2010 (3)
  • December 2009 (3)
  • November 2009 (4)
  • October 2009 (1)
  • September 2009 (3)
  • August 2009 (2)
  • July 2009 (2)
  • June 2009 (2)
  • May 2009 (2)
  • April 2009 (1)
  • False Documents Category

    26th Nov

    Man Not Named Smit

    Last time we talked about the arrest of a local Dutch-Paris leader under a false name in Brussels. A very similar thing happened to another Dutch-Paris leader in Paris. This man, who we’ll call Smit, had been an important leader of Dutch-Paris and other rescue groups in Brussels until the Gestapo got too close. He […]

    12th Nov

    Here’s an example of why you cannot assume that an individual will appear in the wartime documents under only one name. To my knowledge, this same thing happened to two members of Dutch-Paris. When German security personnel raided an apartment or a business with the intention of arresting a particular resister, they tended to arrest […]

    29th Oct

    Names can be tricky in World War II archives. I’ve found people who worked for Dutch-Paris under 10 or 12 different names in different archives, and even under different names in the same archive. There are basically two reasons for that. First, resisters and fugitives all had a legal name and perhaps a nickname, say […]

    30th Apr

    As we’ve discussed in the last two posts, it wasn’t all that hard to forge an identity card in France or Belgium. Pastors and university students did it. But it was actually much more complicated than just creating a document that would pass casual inspection. The biggest problem with forged documents was that the police […]

    16th Apr

    In our last blog we were talking about who forged the false documents for resisters and other fugitives. From the admittedly small sample of Dutch-Paris, it appears that resisters did it themselves as one of the tasks required to resist. Any of you who are thinking about your own government-issued identity card in 2023 are […]

    2nd Apr

    How many Forgers?

    Let’s continue with questions from the comments on the side of my talk about Dutch-Paris on WW2TV on youtube. Someone asked, very sensibly, how many good forgers were available to make false documents for the resistance and other fugitives. That’s a question no one will ever be able to answer with any certainty because forgers […]

    14th Nov

    Our last post started talking about a Dutch expatriate named Bernard as an exemplar of the confusion of the Occupation. Bernard was one of those Dutch expatriates who responded to a request for help from a refugee by creating an entire rescue network and helping just about anyone who asked for help. He was in […]

    13th Jun

    To continue with our armchair travels and plans for next year, here are four museums in Belgium and the Netherlands to put on the itinerary. Let’s start in the small town of Leopoldsburg in Belgium close to the Dutch border, within easy reach of Brussels and Maastricht. A new museum about the Liberation of Belgium […]

    28th Jul

    I’ve finally figured out why the map on the first version of the cover for The Escape Line was wrong. I couldn’t understand why the designer had included towns that were not part of Dutch-Paris’s routes. But I had made the mistake of assuming that the designer had based the cover on the photos and […]

    21st Oct

    Just about 75 years ago, on October 13, 1943, Jean Weidner left Switzerland illegally but with the assistance of a Swiss officer, to create the Dutch-Paris escape line. Up until this point, he and his colleagues had been running an escape line between Lyon (France) and Geneva (Switzerland). Weidner himself had not been to northern […]