Searching for the Dutch-Paris Escape Line
Although Dutch-Paris had dependable routes between Brussels, Paris, Lyon, Toulouse and Geneva, Weidner and his top lieutenants did not travel on them. Instead they had their own ways of getting from one place to another. Weidner travelled on the false papers of a businessman, allowing him to take the fastest trains between one city and another. His courier Moen, on the other hand, tacked across France on local trains and climbed along the outside of a bridge stuffed with barbed wire to cross from France to Belgium.
Nor did they stay with other Dutch-Paris resisters in any of the cities they visited. Instead they had their own safe houses, the addresses of which they did not share with anyone.
The leaders made appointments with their colleagues and showed up when and where they were expected. Very few people knew how to reach them between these appointments. It was possible to send a letter to Moen under a false name poste restante at a train station in Paris. It was also possible to leave a message with Weidner’s sister at her job in Paris. But only Moen and Weidner knew when and if they might collect them.
Why all the secrecy? Weidner and Moen knew the most about Dutch-Paris. If they were caught, the enemy might have been able to torture everyone else’s names and addresses out of the two Dutchmen. It was in everyone’s best interest to keep them safe. The best way to do that was to limit what everyone else knew about their whereabouts. They all had reason to be grateful that Weidner and Moen had been so careful in February 1944 when the Germans arrested some but not all of the members of the line.
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