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 […]

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 […]

Knowing as you do that the Normandy Landings on June 6, 1944, turned out to be a huge success and that the Allies won the Second World War, you would think that the Germans focused all their resources and all their attention on pushing back the Allied advance. This was a lot more true for […]

There’s a new feature on the blog called “Upcoming Events.” It’s on the top of the right hand column inside a WWII-era identity card issued by the city of Brussels (Ville de Bruxelles). You can see what’s coming up at a glance and get more details by clicking on “view all events” at the bottom […]

I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed for a documentary about a Dutch Jew who was in southern France from 1940 to September 1942.* Like Weidner, this man, whom we’ll call Sal, was involved with the efforts of the Dutch consulate in Lyon to help Dutch Jews in 1942. The director asked me a […]

Today, May 5, is the anniversary of the Liberation of the entirety of the Netherlands in 1945.  Last night, May 4, communities across the country commemorated the terrible losses that the Dutch people suffered during the Second World War.  It’s symbolically appropriate that Oxford University Press will release my book on Dutch-Paris in the US […]

The common practice of using aliases or noms de guerre in the resistance worked very well. In at least two cases of Dutch-Paris resisters, the Germans never cracked the resisters pseudonym, even in the concentration camps. Not that there was anything good about being deported to a concentration camp. But in these cases the men […]

Continuing with the ways in which the history of Dutch-Paris illustrates Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, we come to Snyder’s lessons 15 and 16. Lesson 15 is “Contribute to good causes. Be active in organizations, political or not, that express your own view of life.” Dutch-Paris was an organization that […]

As an escape line and rescue organization, Dutch-Paris ended at the Spanish frontier. The passeurs stopped at the border, handed out some pesetas that Dutch-Paris paid for, pointed the aviators and Engelandvaarders down the mountain towards the closest Spanish village and then turned around and headed back home. The resisters in Dutch-Paris did not know […]

I think that everyone can agree that the launch of the Dutch translation of my book on Dutch-Paris, Gewone Helden (Ordinary Heroes), in Amsterdam on 10 November 2016 was a great success. Many thanks to Maarten Eliasar and his extended family for organizing the symposium and watching over every last detail. Just over 280 people […]