Searching for the Dutch-Paris Escape Line
Here’s another example of social connections among members of Dutch-Paris that were established before the war. Sometimes people recruited others for their resistance network from among the people they worked with.
There was a man in eastern Belgium, for example, who worked for a government bureau that allowed him to travel from place to place in the fulfillment of his professional duties. This was true for police officers, doctors and clergy, of course. But it was also true for people who did things like inspect and repair roads and bridges. After all, the occupation lasted five years and it was in the best interests of the occupation forces to keep the road ways strong enough for tanks and troops to move along.
So this man – we’ll call him Limbourg – had a useful job from the point of view of resistance because he could travel more freely than most civilians. He also spoke to people in different towns, meaning that he could gather information. His fellow civil servants had the same advantages.
Limbourg recruited co-workers to the resistance line that his wife ran. In fact, he worked with a man who belonged to the Comité in Brussels. That’s the link that brought some of the downed aviators who went through Dutch-Paris into Dutch-Paris’s orbit.
Unfortunately Limbourg and his 20 year-old son were arrested in August 1944, less than a month before their town was liberated. Limbourg was tortured. We can presume that his son was as well. Limbourg was rescued from prison by a Dutch group in a bold raid in early September. His son died in a concentration camp in March 1945.
Leave a reply