How to Flee the Gestapo

The leader of Dutch-Paris, John Henry Weidner, was born 100 years ago today on 22 October 1912, in the Belgian city of Gent.  As the son and grandson of ministers, Weidner was raised to know right from wrong.  When they lived in Switzerland in the 1920’s, for example, Papa Weidner didn’t want his four children […]

There are times when I find myself almost overwhelmed by the courage and dedication of the men and women of Dutch-Paris and the Resistance. It happened today as I read the statement that a widowed French nurse born in 1893, gave to the British when she returned to Paris from Ravensbrück in 1945. In September […]

In August 1945, the Dutch ambassador in Paris received a letter from a man in The Hague who was looking for his son. The 21 year-old had left the Netherlands on 2 March 1942 intending to leave Occupied Europe to fight the Japanese (he had been born in the Netherlands Indies). He wrote his parents […]

Although we tend to think of Resistance as intense flashes of danger like we see in the movies, it’s important to remember that the Occupation ground on for years. In between the exciting parts, the heroes and heroines still needed to get their shoes fixed and take care of their families.  They all had great […]

Like all organizations, resistance networks were faced with occasional turnovers in their management positions, although not always for the usual reasons. Take the Committee affiliated with Dutch-Paris in Brussels. It began in the spring of 1942 as the work of three men: a Dutch (Protestant) pastor we’ll call the Dominee, a Dutch (Jewish) businessman we’ll […]

It’s not hard to come up with a long list of hazards involved in rescuing fugitives from the Nazis.  The Germans themselves and their collaborators in all their many manifestations take the top of the list, followed by the usual problems of living in a warzone, such as bombardments.   Sometimes, however, the fugitives’ fear put […]

There isn’t much mystery about why people went to Switzerland or Spain via Dutch-Paris. They were fleeing from the lethal Nazi persecution of the Jews. Or they had been involved in the Resistance but the Gestapo had found their trail. Or they were members of the Allied military, or wanted to fight the Germans alongside […]

While reading through all these documents in the Netherlands, Belgium and France, I’ve noticed something about the way that resisters referred to themselves during and immediately after the war. It wasn’t the same in all three countries. In France, clandestine opposition to the German occupation was always known as la Résistance, the heroic efforts of […]

Here’s an intriguing turn of events. I’ve come across the name of a Belgian man, we’ll call him Legrand, in a few reports in a couple of archives. The first is a long and detailed account written by an enthusiastic member of Dutch-Paris in Brussels, known as the Comité. Legrand makes a brief appearance as […]

Few people today appreciate the chaotic disaster of Germany in 1945 or of the millions of non-German Displaced Persons liberated there by the Allies. It would take a number of books to understand it. But I can give you one example of the confusion that also explains the richness of the archives of the Dutch Red […]