How to Flee the Gestapo

In a previous post I mentioned the possibility of false resisters making claims to having been in the resistance during the uncertain period of the Liberation.  It happened. Not often, but often enough that if you come across someone making claims that no one else in the resistance network verifies, you should treat those claims […]

At the beginning of this discussion about finding Engelandvaarders in the archives, I mentioned that it’s important to get more than one version of any particular event. Obviously that’s true in almost all situations. But let’s think about why it’s important when reading through the documents on resistance. Keep in mind that most of the […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

I’ve mentioned these archives before, but people keep asking me where to look for documents about an uncle or grandfather who was an Engelandvaarder. So here are the first places to look. But first, if you find any documents, make sure to note down all the names you come across. And then use those names […]

I recently had a wonderful conversation with a Dutch woman and her mother. They’re trying to piece together the story of their father/grandfather. He was arrested on the Franco-Swiss border in 1942 and executed shortly thereafter. The family has some letters that the Engelandvaarder wrote from prison. They also have some information from the man’s […]

Footnotes. Who needs them? You do, for two reasons. First, footnotes are like a trail of breadcrumbs that a previous researcher left for you. If you’re lucky enough to find a scholarly book about the subject you’re researching, it will have footnotes. Those footnotes will be full of extremely helpful information such as: names of […]

Now that we’ve talked about where to find documents about resisters during WWII, you have to know how to evaluate the documents you find. Just because someone wrote something down a few generations ago does not mean it’s true. People were confused during the war. Some people even outright lied during the war, particularly if […]

Continuing on from the last two posts about archives, let’s run through a strategy to do some archival research. Here are the two most important things to remember: Ask the archivists for help. In my experience, archivists are friendly professionals who know a heck of a lot about where information might be hiding. Take a […]