How to Flee the Gestapo

I’ve come to Paris to try to figure out how it came about that over one hundred members of Dutch-Paris were arrested in February and March of 1944, many of them later dying in the concentration camps. John Henry Weidner was more than a little interested in the question himself, and, as a Captain in […]

On 19 February 1944 a black automobile running on gasoline drove into the border town of St-Julien (Haute-Savoie, France) and stopped at the home of Police Inspector C. (born 1906). Four men in civilian clothes got out. After they arrested the inspector, two of the men took his wife to the Hotel Cheval Blanc where […]

In March 1951 a man (b. 1890) who had sheltered fugitives for Dutch-Paris in Brussels wrote a letter to John Henry Weidner about the group’s recent commemoration of “onze gedenkdag” on 28 February. Literally that means “our anniversary” but in this case it would be better translated as “our remembrance day.” On the 28th of […]

Around this time of year in 1943, the oversight committee of the Brussels branch of Dutch-Paris (the Comitétot Steun van Nederlandse Oorlogsslachtoffers in België) started getting worried about security. They felt that the escape line for pilots and Engelandvaarders should be completely separated from the “social work” that supported about four hundred people hiding in […]