In another example of employment related connections among resisters, I’ve noticed that a number of people in Dutch-Paris worked for the same Dutch insurance company, De Utrecht. If we were talking about any other circumstance than the illegal resistance during the Nazi occupation, the number would be insignificant. But these men lived in different cities, even different countries at a time when travel and communications were restricted. They were not the leaders of Dutch-Paris who circulated from place to place. They stayed in their own cities and yet managed to end up in the same highly secret resistance network.

How to explain that? Pure coincidence is always a possibility but I don’t think so. It’s entirely likely that these men knew each other, at least professionally, from their work. They may even have met at company gatherings.

And think about the advantages of working at an international insurance company would offer to an escape line that covered most of western Europe. Management types would have had well-established and legal reasons and means to communicate with each other. They would also have access to the company’s banking system. Private individuals could not send money or even family letters across borders without scrutiny by the German authorities. But a company like De Utrecht would have had less trouble doing so.

I did not uncover any document that spelled out that the men who worked for De Utrecht and belonged to Dutch-Paris were involved in any illegal communications or money transfers. But I wouldn’t expect to find such a written confession either. If they did do such things, they were breaking the law and possibly acting against company policy. There would have been no need to advertise it after the war.
My historian’s instinct tells me they did. But my historian’s obligation to document and footnote my facts means that this is all just speculation.