How to Flee the Gestapo

Just like Dutch-Paris was not the only escape line running through western Europe during WWII, I am hardly the only historian who has been researching escape lines. One of the most dedicated and most helpful of my fellow researchers is Bruce Bollinger. If you’ve done any research on the subject at all, you’ve probably come across his extensive and extremely helpful website: https://wwii-netherlands-escape-lines.com/

Bruce’s interest in escape lines began decades ago when he visited an uncle in Belgium who told him about hiding an American aviator during the war. Unfortunately the uncle died the next year, but Bruce found the American aviator and began tracking down every detail of his evasion to Spain and everyone who Read the rest of this entry »

Seventy-five years ago, during the Christmas season of 1944, the people of western Europe had both reason for hope and reason for fear.

They had reason to hope because the Allies had landed in Normandy more than six months earlier and already liberated most of France, Belgium and southern Holland. Anyone who saw the well-fed and well-equipped Allied armies had every reason to expect that the war would finally be over before the end of 1945.

At that time, during the Liberation era, there was also cause to hope that the peace would be accompanied with new levels of social and economic justice.

But the war still raged and even those who had been freed from occupation months earlier had reasons to fear. Most of the Netherlands was still under occupation and was already well into the catastrophe of the Hunger Winter, a man-made famine imposed by the German occupation authorities on the Dutch population north of the rivers as punishment for their support of the resistance and the Allies. It would be many months before the Red Cross and the Allies were allowed to bring food to the Dutch.

On a smaller scale, there were still Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing on with our discussion of the use of the railways by escape lines, we should recognize the railway men who belonged to Dutch-Paris. There were two that I know of.

The first was a Dutch railway official who worked at the Gare du Nord, the station where all the trains to and from the north, including Belgium and the Netherlands, stopped in Paris. Our man in the station was a source of invaluable information and of less travelled ways in and out of the station. He also opened his family home to the organization for meetings and sent his teenage sons out with messages. The entire family was arrested and kept in jail by the French for two nights. After that, the French police turned our man over to the Germans but let the family go. Our man died in the concentration camps.

Our second railway man was a supervisor for the French railways in the Pyrenees. Or at least he way until he was ordered to arrange the loading of forced laborers onto a train bound for the Third Reich. His refusal to do so made him a criminal. He spent the rest of the war underground, working as a passeur or guide for downed Allied aviators and other fugitives over the Pyrenees into Spain.

There were undoubtedly other railway employees who helped Dutch-Paris out in one way or another without committing to outright resistance as part of the line. It’s likely, for example, that the men and women working for the line in Paris knew which trains to Toulouse were not patrolled by document inspectors because someone in the railways told them.

Just as Dutch-Paris could not have escorted fugitives across occupied Europe to safety in neutral Switzerland or Spain without using the train, they could not have done it without help from the railway workers.

Here’s an interesting question that someone asked at one of my talks about Dutch-Paris. If downed Allied aviators and resisters were escaping the Nazis on the trains, why didn’t the Gestapo just take over all the trains?

If there are any grad students out there looking for a dissertation topic, that would be a good one because the history of the railways during Nazi occupation is deeply complex. You could, actually, write a dissertation on very specific railway topics such as the catastrophic Dutch railway strike begun in September 1944 or the use of the railways to transfer prisoners in the spring of 1945 when it would have been far more rational for the Third Reich to use what lines and stock still functioned for military purposes.

But let’s limit ourselves to the use of the railways by Dutch-Paris and the specific question of why the Gestapo didn’t take over the trains to stop escape lines.

To a certain extent, the answer is that the Gestapo, or at least the German occupation authorities, did take over the trains. The Gestapo did not send its own agents to drive locomotives. But they did patrol passenger trains and railway stations, reserving the right to detain anyone at any time. And if it wasn’t the Gestapo checking passengers’ documents, it could have been Read the rest of this entry »

With all the dramatic stories of resistance in movies and novels, we tend to forget that resisters were civilians living under an occupation that lasted for four or five years. Like all other civilians they had to get by on short rations and worn out shoes. They lived in cold houses and drank ersatz coffee made out of roasted chickory like everyone else. Maybe they had more than their fair share of fear and anxiety, knowing that the authorities were after them as they did. And resisters who traveled as couriers or guides had much more than their fair share of the inconveniences of trying to get around as a civilian in Occupied Europe.

Travel was difficult for every civilian, of course. Because of the gasoline ration, the only option for long distance travel was the trains. Civilian passenger trains did not get top priority during the Occupation and could easily be delayed or cancelled because the Occupation authorities declared that either the train or the track was needed for military purposes. The only way to know for sure when and if a train was running, was to go to the station to inquire.

If a train was running, there was a good chance that it would be delayed. In addition to the usual, peacetime reasons that a train might be delayed, there were a few reasons specific to the occupation. In an air raid, trains stopped wherever they were so that the passengers could evacuate it to seek shelter. If they happened to be in a rural area, passengers could find themselves lying in a ditch until the all clear sounded. If the pilots damaged the train, the passengers could be there for a long time or would need to walk to the nearest town. Sabotage attempts had similar consequences although they were possibly more dangerous.

A Dutch-Paris courier reported in late 1943 that he was late getting to Paris because someone, presumably resisters, had blown up the track underneath a couple of carriages while his train went over it. The courier had helped to rescue the wounded. Other passengers helped to push the damaged carriages off the track. They had hooked up the remaining carriages and continued on.
Even without attacks, the trains of the time were cold, unlit and very crowded. They were ideal places for police to check people’s documents because very few people are willing to jump off a moving train. Train stations were also subject to heavy surveillance. International couriers and guides also had to go through several layers of document and customs inspections at every border.
There wasn’t anything very glamorous about train travel during the Occupation, even if the traveler was a courier or guide in heightened danger of arrest during the journey.

Every once in a while I pass a car with a bumper sticker urging me to practice “random acts of kindness.” It sounds like a warm, fuzzy way to make the world nicer. But if you look at the story of Dutch-Paris, you’ll see that random acts of kindness can have profound consequences.

For example, in late 1943 a Dutch-Paris courier was on his way to a rendezvous at an apartment building in Brussels. He knocked on the wrong door. The lady who answered the door told him that the Gestapo was in the apartment he was looking for. It goes without saying that he left the building immediately. He was free to play an instrumental role in linking up the line and escorting hundreds of people to safety.

That neighbor lady did not have to answer her door at all. She put herself at risk by warning the stranger about the Gestapo. No one would put it past them to arrest her for doing that. In that situation, her act was not only kind but courageous.

Here’s another example that I’ve mentioned before. In December 1943 an Engelandvaarder was arrested in Paris by Wehrmacht officers. He opened the back door of their vehicle, rolled out and ran off through the blacked out streets of Paris. At one point, after the alarm had been sounded and the police were in pursuit, an old lady took the young man by the arm and told him to escort her to the Metro. The police paid him no attention because he was escorting an old woman. Her kindness, and her courage, certainly saved him.

The complete story of Dutch-Paris has to be full of such spontaneous acts of kindness. Not all of them would have been so courageous. Just giving food to a fugitive would have made a big difference to people on the run. Looking the other way, making a gesture to indicate that police were ahead, giving a foreigner directions, all those things would have made a difference to fugitives and the resisters helping them. It’s impossible to even begin to count the random acts of kindness that supported Dutch-Paris. Only the most dramatic, like the lady taking the Engelandvaarder’s arm on the streets of Paris, made it into the archives. Others may have been remembered only in the family stories of the beneficiaries. Others may not even have been noticed by anyone but the person who did them. But there is no doubt whatsoever that random acts of kindness played an important role in the resistance to the Nazis.

Although the most common image of the Liberation of Europeans from Nazi Occupation 75 years ago is one of joyous celebration, we should not forget that tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians paid for that liberation with their lives. The Dutch certainly haven’t.

Within weeks of the liberation of my father and his neighbors in Maastricht, the US Army began burying its dead in a cemetery outside the village of Margraten. Known today as the Netherlands American Cemetery, it now houses the graves of 8,291 military dead and lists the names of 1,722 of the missing. Like all Allied war cemeteries in western Europe, Margraten’s beautiful park shelters seemingly endless rows of white crosses and stars of David (link to site).

What distinguishes Margraten from other war cemeteries is the way that the Dutch people have cared for it. Right in 1944, when the first bodies were buried there, before the war was even won, local people adopted the graves of American soldiers. Volunteers were given one or more graves to tend with only the most basic information about the deceased: name, rank, home state and, if possible, day of death. They knew almost nothing about the person buried there except that he, or in some cases she, had died in the fight to save them all from the Nazis. That was enough for these Dutch men and women to continue to bring flowers to the grave for the rest of their lives. When the original volunteer died, someone else in the family took over the obligation to tend the grave.

If you look at Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s continue with the story of my father’s liberation from the Nazis 75 years ago in Maastricht. He was 6 years old, so his memories are the impression of a child.

He remembers that American Army trucks and equipment rolled past his home day and night for days. The Dutch, who had been on short rations for years, were amazed at that wealth and at the organization of the American First Army. Why, the Americans even brought their own bridge to replace the centuries old St Servaas bridge that the Germans had blown when they retreated! Nonetheless, an American officer apologized to some local dignitaries that it took his engineers more than 12 hours to lay that Bailey Bridge across the River Maas. They were usually much quicker, he said, but they hadn’t slept in days.

The local Dutch found all this wealth and efficiency reassuring enough to definitively celebrate their Liberation with Read the rest of this entry »

Seventy-five years ago the fate of the Netherlands hung in the balance as the Allies and the Wehrmacht battled for control of the Dutch bridges over the Rhine in Operation Market Garden. The Allies lost that battle, leading to the catastrophic Hunger Winter, or man-made famine, in the northern two-thirds of the country.

By that time, however, the southern portion of the country had already been liberated and was put under the control of a Dutch Military Government under Prince Bernhard (married to Princess Juliana, heir to the Dutch throne). The city of Maastricht, through which many of the aviators who were helped by Dutch-Paris had traveled on their way to Spain, had already been liberated by American troops on September 14.

In the days leading up to the 14th, there were plenty of signs to give the people of Maastricht reason to hope that their liberation was near. Brussels, which wasn’t all that far away, had been liberated on the 3rd. They could hear artillery firing, although that only meant that battle was heading their way. More tellingly, the Germans were burning their files and documents. There was no reason to do that unless they were planning to leave. Furthermore, and somewhat shockingly, there were German soldiers moving through town who looked worn and ragged. The people of Maastricht were used to seeing the occupation forces strutting around with highly polished boots and sharp creases. These soldiers looked like they might be losing.

My father, who was six years old, had his own sign. His older brother who had been underground with the resistance for some time had come back home. His mother made him leave his gun at the back door when he came in the house, but the point was that he was back home.

On the morning of the 14th the people in his neighborhood were anxious that the sound of artillery fire might be bringing the fight onto their doorsteps, but hopeful that they would soon see the last of the occupation forces. Children were told to stay inside. Most people stayed inside. Then a tank rolled down the street and stopped in the intersection.

The people of the neighborhood did not recognize the tank, but that did not mean it was an Allied tank. It could have been a new model German tank. But when a soldier popped out of the top and lit a cigarette, they knew it could not possibly be a German. They were liberated!

Brussels was a dangerous place for civilians 75 years ago, during the summer of 1944, especially for men of military age.  The German occupation authorities had absolutely no tolerance for anything that could interfere with their military operations and heightened their surveillance of the civilian population.   They also rounded men up off the street to ship off to the Third Reich as forced labor.   If Dutch-Paris needed to deliver money or ration coupons to any of the 400 people they were hiding in and around the city or to visit them for any reason during those last months of the war, it was a woman who ventured into the streets to do it.

Dutch-Paris was able to avoid further arrests during that summer, at times very narrowly, but they did already have people in prison.   There was an elderly woman and a young man who were arrested in November 1943 during a raid on another resistance network.   They had been tried and sentenced to deportation but had not been deported along with their co-defendants.  The only explanation for that is bribery, but there’s no proof of it.   The two of them, however, were included in the last trainload of political prisoners slated to leave Brussels for the Third Reich, known as the “phantom train.”   Belgian resisters managed to misplace the train long enough that it never left Belgium and the political prisoners were liberated with the rest of their compatriots.

Other members of Dutch-Paris had been arrested at the safe house on rue Franklin on February 28, 1944.  Their landlady was deported and killed at Ravensbruck, but they did not leave the prison of St Gilles until being transferred to a prison camp at Beverloo when the Allies were already on the horizon.   The guards there did execute some prisoners, but none of the Dutch-Paris resisters.   Instead, they were liberated on September 4, 1944, the day after Brussels was liberated.

Unlike their Dutch-Paris counterparts in France, the men and women of Dutch-Paris in Brussels could celebrate their liberation without the shadow of anxiety for resistance colleagues who had been deported to the concentration camps at the last minute.