How to Flee the Gestapo

If you’ve seen the photos of Dutch-Paris fugitives crossing the Pyrenees into Spain in my book or on the WW2TV talk, you may be wondering why on earth those young men are standing in snow up to their knees way up in the mountains without so much as a warm hat let alone a decent […]

During my talk about Dutch-Paris on WW2TV someone asked if Vichy patrolled the Franco-Spanish border as tightly at the Germans did. The answer is no, but possibly only because Vichy didn’t have the same resources as the Third Reich did. The German occupation authorities posted a number of units in the forbidden zone of the […]

Following the last post about the Swiss border, here’s a story about some Dutch Jews who Dutch-Paris helped get into Switzerland. They were especially resourceful people who had managed to get out of the Netherlands, through Belgium, through Northern France and over the Demarcation Line pretty much on their own. When they got to Lyon […]

Some of the people who watched me talk about Dutch-Paris on WW2TV when it was first broadcast asked some interesting questions in the side comments. I couldn’t address them during the show, but I thought I’d answer a few of them here and in the next few posts.  [link for the ww2tv show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vWmwfHMb7o] Let’s start […]

In earlier posts I described Dutch-Paris’s contributions to the iconic WWII of the Engelandspiel (Operation North Pole) and the Great Escape from Stalag Luft III. Today let’s look at the role that Dutch-Paris played in an escape of Allied POWs from the maximum security prison at Colditz Castle. It was difficult enough to get out […]

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, Dutch-Paris played small roles in three iconic WWII stories: the Engelandspiel (Operation North Pole); The Great Escape and the escape from the POW prison at Colditz. In all three, Dutch-Paris escorted escapees on the last leg of their journey to neutral Spain. In case you haven’t seen the […]

In our last post we left the Polish captain turned resister Wyssogota on a deportation train heading to the concentration camps in the Third Reich in April 1943. Never one to accept a bad situation, our man was among 50 men who jumped from the train on the German side of the Rhine. Although he […]

It’s the time of year when we’re thinking of the liberation of France, Belgium and the southern part of the Netherlands. But 2021, sadly, is not the year to go tour the beaches of Normandy or see any of the sites of Liberation. But we can dream, and to help you plan your next tour […]

I am equally pleased to let you know of the publication of another book involving Dutch-Paris: Luck through Adversity: The Memoir of a Dutchman’s Flight to Freedom through the Dutch-Paris Escape Line of World War II by Pieter Rudolph Zeeman. Any of you familiar with the story of Dutch-Paris will remember Rudy Zeeman as the […]

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 […]