How to Flee the Gestapo

Today, May 5, is the 74th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands. The Dutch have a big party to celebrate every five years. But every single year they commemorate the war and occupation on May 4 with solemn memorials across the country attended by huge crowds. It’s not that the Dutch weren’t happy or grateful to be liberated. In fact, Dutch families still tend the graves of Allied soldiers who died in the battles to liberate the Netherlands. It’s just that the catastrophe of five years of occupation outweighs the joy of ending that occupation.

The Dutch had a hard war, but none of the military destruction, forced removals, or deportations was as traumatic for the population as whole as the last winter of the war.  After the Allies landed in Normandy in June 1944, they pushed on to liberate Paris at the end of August 1944 and Brussels in early September 1944. The Allies continued north into the Netherlands but stopped at the natural barrier of the major rivers that divide the southern third of the country from the northern two-thirds. After the debacle of the failure of Operation Market Garden Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s another worry that Weidner and his lieutenants faced as they tried to figure out the extent of the German roll-up of Dutch-Paris in late February 1944. Would the Germans carry out their published threat of punishing the extended families of resisters who helped Allied aviators? After all, they arrested the 14 year-old son of one resister, and the boy later reported that interrogators repeatedly demanded to know where his mother and younger sisters were hiding. They also arrested Weidner’s sister as a hostage.

Weidner tracked down the hiding place of the mother and girls to offer to take them to Switzerland. The mother declined because she Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing our discussion of the fall-out of the wave of arrests in Dutch-Paris in late February 1944, we come to the question of what the survivors should do. The sensible thing would have been to call it a day and scatter into false identities and new hiding places far from Paris, Brussels or Lyon. But they couldn’t do that because too many people were depending on them. There were Jews in hiding places and Allied aviators in safe houses waiting to move onward to Spain. Weidner and his colleagues would not abandon these people, so they kept Dutch-Paris going.

But Jean Weidner did not have to lose another sister to the Germans. One sister, Gabrielle, was sitting in prison as a hostage meant to lure Weidner into giving himself up. But Weidner’s other sister, Annette, was at large in Paris. The Germans Read the rest of this entry »

Seventy-five years ago Jean Weidner and his lieutenants were still trying to figure out just what happened in Paris, Brussels and Lyon at the end of February 1944. With the bird’s eye view of hindsight, we know that German police coordinated raids on several Dutch-Paris addresses on the same morning in Paris and then in Brussels and Lyon two days later. But at the time the resisters had no way of knowing that. They knew that a handful of their colleagues had been arrested and that others were missing. But what had happened to them? Had they been captured? Had they gone even further underground to avoid arrest and just not re-established contact yet?

The question had wider consequences than the fate of one particular individual. If the missing person had gone deeply underground, then he or she was safe, which was a relief. If he or she had been arrested, though, Read the rest of this entry »

Luck played a role in the escape or capture of every Allied aviator, but it wasn’t possible to predict whether the luck would be good or bad. Take the story of an American gunner whose B-17 crashed in the Netherlands in November 1943. We’ll call him Ken. It was 13 days before his 22nd birthday and only his second bombing mission. Bad luck.

The entire crew was arrested at the scene of the crash, more bad luck, but they had a career military man with them who had studied the question of escape and evasion. That was good luck that combined with some impressive determination to allow our man Ken to jump out of a moving train and run away in the dark. He had the good luck to approach the farm house of a family that was not only sympathetic but who had connections to an escape line. The Dutch resisters took Ken and two of his crew mates to Belgium, where they passed them to Dutch-Paris.

Ken just happened to be in Paris when German counter-intelligence officers rolled up Dutch-Paris there. As good luck would have it, Read the rest of this entry »

German counter-espionage officers stationed in occupied Holland, Belgium and France were highly professional and effective.  They did not, for example, hare right off to raid every address that they tortured out of a Dutch-Paris courier in mid-February 1944.   They knew that the courier’s colleagues would be hiding and they could wait for those colleagues to get tired of hiding and get back to work rescuing Jews and helping aviators.   So they gathered more information and bided their time.   They interviewed concierges.   They kept buildings under surveillance.   They shadowed suspects.

Then they pounced.  Early on February 26, 1944, German and French police raided several addresses in and near Paris.   They took their captives to headquarters and started torturing them right away.  Within hours they made more arrests.   By the end of the day they’d captured most of the people in Paris who were involved with the Dutch-Paris aviator escape line.   They did not bother anyone who was doing other jobs for Dutch-Paris because these particular officers were really only Read the rest of this entry »

Seventy-five years ago tomorrow, on 11 February 1944, several men and women who belonged to Dutch-Paris met for lunch in Paris at a Chinese restaurant that was probably on the rue Monsieur le Prince in the Latin Quarter near the Sorbonne. It wasn’t a happy meeting. Paris wasn’t a happy place in early 1944. Food was short but Germans and their spies were plentiful.
The men and women at the table were engaged in the dangerous and illegal task of spiriting downed Allied aviators through the French capital and on to Toulouse. Some of them had only met each other recently in the context of Dutch-Paris. That meant that they did not know each other’s true names, or each other’s families or even, really, anything about each other. They had no way of knowing for certain that no one at the table was in the pay of the Germans, but they did know for certain that other Dutch resisters in France had been arrested because of traitors who pretended to be resisters.

The purpose of the meeting was to organize a convoy of aviators set to leave Paris that very evening on the night train to Toulouse. They needed to settle who would bring which aviators to the train station and who would escort them south. One man there also decided that they needed to settle the group’s accounts right then and there. He collected receipts for train tickets and the like in the restaurant in full view of Read the rest of this entry »

Blog – 75 years col du portet d’aspet

Seventy-five years ago next week, on February 5, 1944, 30 men – 10 downed American aviators, three British aviators, an Australian, one Belgium civilians and 11 Dutch Engelandvaarders rendezvoused in a meadow outside of a hamlet high in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Their two French guides led them through a tiny village and into the mountains. There was already three feet of snow. Within hours a blizzard struck with heavy snow and vicious winds.

None of the men had adequate boots or winter gear and most of them had been traveling for the past several days and nights. It was dark but they couldn’t use any lights because they might attract the notice of the German patrols in the area. All the men were struggling. One of the aviators broke down but two of his colleagues carried him. The Dutchmen helped each other. They took shelter in a hut but were too cold and wet to sleep. The next morning dawned clear and beautiful. The guides decided that if the men weren’t sleeping they might as well move on. They had eight miles up and down mountainsides to go before they reached Spain.

The Germans, however, had already Read the rest of this entry »

I’m happy to report that The Escape Line has been recorded as an audiobook and is now available to borrow or purchase.   So you can listen to the story of Dutch-Paris on your commute or long drive, although you’d miss out on the photos and maps in the book.

Or you could join a walking memorial and listen to the book while hiking through the Pyrenees in the footsteps of the aviators and Engelandvaarders who Dutch-Paris took to Spain.   The British Charity The Escape Lines Memorial Society (ELMS) offers 16 different treks along the routes of WWII escape lines in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Norway, Denmark, Crete, Poland, Slovenia and Italy.   Some of them are considerably more challenging than others in terms of terrain, but all of them honor the courage and dedication of the men and women who helped aviators and others to escape from the Nazis.  The “Chemin de la Liberté” in the Pyrenees is the closest to the Dutch-Paris routes.

The walking memorials are part of ELMS’s mission to help and honor the helpers.  Now that many helpers no longer need practical assistance with medical fees and the like, ELMS is shifting its focus to education and to building friendships across international borders.  For example, they bring young students who are related to escape line families to their annual reunion in York so that the young people can practice their English, make friends and visit museums.  ELMS also runs an Escape Lines Museum at Eden Camp  WW2 Museum at Malton, North Yorkshire.   They have a very informative newsletter that goes out to members in 26 countries.   And, of course, a website with all the details at www.ww2escapeslines.co.uk.

Of course ELMS can’t completely replicate the experience of aviators and other fugitives.  They run their walking memorials during the summer months, when it’s less likely to blizzard in the Pyrenees, and they walk in the daytime rather than at night because the Gestapo has abandoned the Pyrenees (thank heavens).  But this is as close as you’ll get.  If you’re interested, now’s the time to let the people at ELMS know (www.ww2escapelines.co.uk)

Seventy-five years ago tomorrow, on December 31, 1943, Gestapo agents and other German police officials raided a somewhat seedy inn on the outskirts of Toulouse called the Panier Fleuri. They arrested two Dutchmen, one Belgian and one Irishman with connections to Dutch-Paris.  They also arrested the landlord, but released him shortly.  In fact, the Germans probably arrested everyone they found there, but the documents do not record who they were.

Dutch Engelandvaarders had been using the Panier Fleuri since the acting Dutch consul in Toulouse made an arrangement with the owners in August 1943. It was enough of an open secret that tram drivers who stopped at both the train station and the inn told Dutchmen not to worry when they got on, they’d tell them when to get off. Indeed, too many fugitives were hanging around at the Panier Fleuri. When a Dutch-Paris courier arrived in town in November 1943, she wrote to Weidner to tell him that they had to Read the rest of this entry »