How to Flee the Gestapo

Dutch-Paris had an elaborate system for smuggling Jews, resisters and other people who needed to get out of the Nazis’ grasp from France to Switzerland. They had a chain of safe houses, many sources of false documents, donors willing to fund the effort and helpers willing to put themselves at risk to escort the fugitives. […]

As I’m writing the snow is falling down faster than we can keep the walkways shoveled, and the schools have been closed for the next three days due to dangerously cold temperatures. The last winters of the war and the first winters of the peace were also remarkably cold. But unless you stick to straightforward […]

In the previous post I shared the reflections of Frits, a Dutch university student who smuggled Jews and Engelandvaarders over the border from the Netherlands into Belgium for Dutch-Paris. As far as passeurs go, Frits was unusual. Generally speaking, you can divide up passeurs into three classes: volunteers, professionals and criminals. Frits was a volunteer […]

One of the ironies of the Nazi Occupation is that it led the most upright, church-going citizens into criminality. Men and women who would not dream of telling a lie, let alone defrauding the government or disobeying a law in 1938 found themselves routinely using false papers, sneaking across borders and generally disregarding the law […]

Humor will tell you a lot about current happenings and values in a culture. Take, for instance, a letter that John Weidner wrote to a colleague at the end of October 1942.* “I returned to Lyon two or three days ago after adventures that I hope to have the “pleasure” of telling you about some […]

Sixty-six years ago this week the Danish government and the Swedish Red Cross evacuated 7,000 female prisoners from the concentration camp at Ravensbrück, most likely saving their lives. The women traveled by the famous White Buses or train to ferries that took them to Sweden, where they were nursed back to sufficient health to return […]

Studying the Second World War gives one a perspective that makes the Thanksgiving season all the more meaningful. During the war, millions of men, women and children were displaced from their homes as soldiers, refugees, (slave) laborers or prisoners. Most did not leave forwarding addresses. So let us be grateful that we know where our […]

On 23 November 1943, two plain clothes German policemen arrested a Dutch banker in the train station in Antwerp, Belgium. The banker sat in a prison in Belgium for three months without being interviewed, was then transferred to an internment camp in the Netherlands where he was interviewed in an almost gentlemanly manner and then […]

I was sitting in the Nationaal Archief in Den Haag reading through the telegrams exchanged between the Dutch Legation in Bern and the Dutch government-in-exile in London when the ever-helpful archivist sat down next to me.  He told me that a mutual acquaintance had called him to say that a certain LF had died. “Oh?”  […]

We – my husband, our two little boys and I – are on our way to The Hague for the next seven months so that I can research Dutch-Paris in the Netherlands and other relevant points. As is so often the case, that sentence has been easier said than done. Apparently my request to spend seven months in […]