Onderduiken

File:AnneFrankHouse Bookcase.jpg

Reconstruction of the swiveling bookcase in the Achterhuis, behind which was the hiding space Anne Frank and her family lived in.

Onderduiken(pronounced: [/ˈɔndərˌdœy̯kə(n)/]), or going into hiding was a phenomenon during World War II where people had to hide themselves, often for long periods of time, to avoid being arrested by the police or German occupiers. At its height, there were more than 350,000 onderduikers in the Netherlands alone.

Onderduikers is a Dutch word which includes everyone who was wanted by the Germans for who they were or what they believed in and went into hiding. It has been borrowed for use here.

Definition

The website Joods Monument gives the following definition:

Onderduiken: Hiding yourself from the Nazi's.

Hiding people at an address where they are not registered. In some cases, secret rooms were created where the onderduikers had to hide themselves. In other cases (especially with children), they joined a "foster family". In the latter case, false papers were often used. When the onderduiking was discovered, the onderduikers were deported or shot on the spot. In many cases, the onderduikers were also deported. At the beginning of 1943, some 25,000 Jews were onderduikers. Of these, as a result of betrayal and partly due to the activities of the Henneicke Column, thousands were rounded up and deported via the penal barracks in Westerbork.

History

In total, at the height of onderduiking at the end of September 1944, after the Railway Strike, the Netherlands had over 350,000 onderduikers – by all accounts an absolute record within occupied Europe. In any case, after the April–May strikes in 1943, this number was already around 300,000 people.

Initially, it was mostly Jews who went into hiding, such as the Frank family with their daughter Anne Frank. Often they were also non-Jews who had good reason to fear arrest by the German occupiers.

Many thousands of men called up for Arbeitseinsatz (forced labor in Germany) went into hiding because they did not want to work for the German occupiers. Those who did go could be wounded or die from Allied air raids, which sometimes involved about a thousand bombers at a time. The reason for Arbeitseinsatz lay in the fact that the vast majority of the German male population was fighting at the front. Therefore, workers had to be obtained elsewhere, from the occupied territories.

Those who dared to openly criticize their German occupiers also had to go into hiding. Priests, artists and writers who disagreed with the Germans went into hiding. Those who did not could be arrested and deported to a concentration camp.

Resistance fighters were also sometimes forced to go into hiding.

Onderduikers came in waves:

• first came the communists, targeted for arrest in June 1941 under the name of "CPN-Aktion" and arrested.

• then came students after the first student strike in November 1941, to avoid employment in the Arbeitseinsatz (forced labor) in Germany
• then more Jews followed because of the start of deportations in the spring of 1942
• then more and more men aged 18 to 40 who did not want to work in Germany, encouraged by the illegal press
• then large groups of men who did not want to return to captivity and also participated in the April-May strikes
• then many participants in the Railway Strike

Jewish onderduikers

In general, it was especially difficult to house Jews until mid-1943, when increased German terror meant that almost every Dutch person could realize that Jews needed this help the most. An aggravating circumstance for Jews was that the majority of Amsterdam Jews, for example, were poor, and thus they could not pay for onderduiking, while paying was not unusual, especially in the beginning.

Furthermore, harboring Jews was subject to increasingly severe punishments, while Jewish onderduikers were also specially hunted by the Henneicke Column and members of the NSB Landstorm, among others. Jew hunters received a bounty of fl. 7.50, and later even more, the so-called "kop geld".

Separate ways of onderduiken were set up for Jewish children, including by:

• Walter Süskind operating from Hollandsche Schouwburg, with help of others
• The NV-group
• The Utrechts Kindercomité in cooperation with the NV-group
• The Catholic church and many different protestant church communities.

About 25,000 Jews were able to survive the war by going into hiding. Among them was also a relatively large number of (fugitive) German Jews, because, in general, their knowledge of the Germans gave them a better idea of the repression that the latter imagined, and because they were often better educated and wealthier.

There were problems with onderduiken, such as exploitation and extortion of Jews, serious problems in the relationship between hiders and hosts. In a few cases this led to the violent death of the person in hiding, as in the case involving the Amsterdam filmmaker Louis van Gasteren. A number of times Jews turned in their fellow Jews, as, for example, the Jewess Ans van Dijk did, the only woman to be executed for collaboration in the Netherlands after the war. However, Sytze van der Zee's 2009 book Vogelvrij revealed that there had been many more Jewish traitors than had been known up to that point.

Living conditions

Hiding was no easy task: often the living and hygienic conditions in the forests and wetlands were dire and one was at the mercy of the cold and the elements. Still others, before going into hiding, had to flee through the woods at night with inadequate protective clothing. The space available to a onderduiker was often very limited: a sheltered attic, a cellar, and as a place to hide during searches, often a hidden closet no bigger than a doghouse. Another such hiding place was (re)discovered in Hilversum in 2009. The families who secretly gave onderduikers a roof over their heads did so at the risk of their own lives. Therefore, it was absolutely necessary for everyone involved to remain completely silent about these onderduikers. A single word leaked out could end up with the Germans (Gestapo or SD), with all its consequences.[3]

Personal stories of onderduikers are collected and illustrated in the project Andere Achterhuizen.

Papers

For the Dutch onderduikers, hiding often also meant that they had to carry a forged identity card. Otherwise they could be found out by the Germans during random raids. This was true insofar as people dared to go out on the streets, but many onderduikers spent day in and day out indoors. With a fake ID one was not there yet, because this meant that one also had to get another distribution stamp card and distribution vouchers. The Dutch resistance took care of this by organizing raids on so-called distribution offices. Here, coupons and (blank) ancestry cards were stolen and then given to those in hiding through certain channels. After all, anyone without an ancestry card and distribution coupons could not buy food or other products.

Places

After the war, it turned out that the village of Aalten probably housed the most onderduikers per capita: 2,500 in a population of 13,000.[5] There were also many onderduikers elsewhere in the eastern Netherlands. There was even a hiding camp, Camp Bernhard, where German prisoners of war were held during the war.

Other popular locations included:

• The in 1942 drained Noordoostpolder (N.O.P.), which got the (translated) nickname "Dutch Onderduikers Paradise".
• The Peel, for being a remote, hard to reach area.
• For dark-haired Jewish kids: Limburg (especially through the „Roomsche” Limburgse Onderduikorganisatie and the Amsterdam NV)
• nationally Friesland
• West-Friesland
• De Biesbosch

Organisations

Landelijke Organisatie voor Hulp aan Onderduikers

Main article: Landelijke Organisatie voor Hulp aan Onderduikers

The Landelijk Organisatie voor Hulp aan Onderduikers (LO) was the main organization that helped onderduikers, especially with addresses and papers. During the German occupation of the Netherlands, the LO was also the largest and main resistance movement. The organization only got off to a good start in 1943 and helped many onderduikers (Jewish and non-Jewish). It provided both hiding addresses and coupon cards, necessary for feeding the onderduikers. These cards often came from the Landelijke Knokploegen (LKP), the armed wing of the LO. The LO even organized hiding fairs, where supply and demand were divided. Often hosts of onderduikers asked for onderduikers of a certain faith, or for only children, or for Jews or specifically not. The LO was divided by province and sometimes within it by religious creed. The "Roman Catholic" or Limburg Hiding Organization were very successful in hiding and anonymizing Jewish children and Jewish war orphans who could be accommodated in boarding schools, hospitals and monasteries as evacuees or "strengthening family members".

Nationaal Steun Fonds

Main article: Nationaal Steun Fonds

The National Support Fund (NSF) was the resistance organization that largely funded the resistance and hiding. The NSF was run by Walraven van Hall (the banker) and Iman Jacob van den Bosch (the naval man). They took out loans from banks and private individuals. The Dutch government in London guaranteed postwar repayment. In October 1944, Van den Bosch was executed near the crematorium at Camp Westerbork, and in January 1945, Van Hall was arrested and executed in Haarlem.

People

Onderduikers

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

• Dolf Cohen - professor and rector magnificus of Leiden University.
• Bloeme Evers-Emden - developmental psychologist who wrote four books in the 1990s about children in hiding, their parents, hiding parents and hiding siblings.
• The Frank family - married couple Otto and Edith Frank and their daughters Anne and Margot, who achieved international fame through the diary written by Anne Frank.
• Pieter Hoppen - onderduiker from Rotterdam who was murdered on suspicion of collaboration by members of KP-Meppel. Postwar investigation revealed Hoppen to be innocent.
• Geert Lubberhuizen - who went into hiding in Amsterdam as a student, Jew helper and illegal publisher.
• Marga Minco - writer.
• Anton Mussert - the NSB leader, spent a week in hiding in Bussum at the beginning of the war until it was clear who was winning. He prided himself on being the first person in hiding in the Netherlands.
• Johannes Post, together with Celina Kuijper, her fiancé Ies Davids, Jan Naber and Albert Rozeman, hid for some time in the woods of Drenthe. Post was first the hider of the Jewish Celina Kuijper.
• Tomas Ross - the writer was born at a hiding place.
• Frits Slomp - the founder of the Landelijke Organisatie voor Hulp aan Onderduikers, a minister from Heemse, also went into hiding in July 1942 and started the relief organization under the pseudonym Frits de Zwerver.
• Henk Sneevliet - internationally known Marxist in the Netherlands, was in hiding in Bergen op Zoom in 1943, where he was arrested after which he was taken to kamp Amersfoort and executed a few days later.
• Ed van Thijn - former minister and PvdA politician, was in hiding for a longer period of time.
• Gerrit van der Veen - this sculptor and resistance fighter had to go into hiding after his attack on the House of Detention in Amsterdam in 1944, but was tracked down a short time later.

Providers for onderduikers

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

• Mari Andriessen, a sculptor who hid resistance fighter Truus Menger, a female friend, and a fellow resistance fighter of Hannie Schaft.
• Caroline Van Belle: mother-superior of the klooster Sint-Antonius te Sint-Pieters-Leeuw hid a total of forty Jewish people.
• Harmke de Boer-Baltjes gave refuge to Jewish onderduikers.
• Corrie, Casper en Betsie ten Boom received and sheltered Jewish onderduikers at home.
• Germaine Chantraine hid up to fifteen Jews at a time in her home in St-Pieters-Woluwe.
• Eugène Cougnet: hid tens of Jews in his boarding school in Heide (Kalmthout), later in the castle of Bassines near Méan (Havelange).
• Grietje Doele-Bokma and her husband Halbe Sikkes Doele made two Jewish children go into hiding.
• Hein Fiedeldij Dop helped between a hundred and two hundred go into hiding.
• Kiky Heinsius hid Jewish onderduikers.
• Louis-Joseph Kerkhofs, bishop of Liège created a "onderduikers-network" in his diocese for persecuted Jews.
• Willem Kolff and his ex-wife Janke offered refuge to Jewish people.
• Eltien en Neeltje Krijthe hid Jewish onderduikers.
• Frans Lemmens: Antwerpian hairdresser, hid three Jewish children in his house.
• Cilia Loots: hid eleven Jewish children in her school.
• Elisabeth de Meijier hid Jewish onderduikers in her home, among whom was Chaim Knorringa and the violinist Theo Olof.
• Yvonne Nèvejean, Director of "Nationaal werk voor Kinderwelzijn"(National work for child wellbeing), was one of the leaders of an organisation which helped with the hiding of Jewish children in Belgium. She played a role with the hiding of about 4.000 children.
• Johannes Post - resistance fighter, see previous.
• Marinus Post offered refuge to Jewish onderduikers.
• Binne Roorda hid eight Jewish onderduikers at his upstairs apartment.
• Simon (Siem) Schoon en Geessien Noorlag offered refuge to Jewish onderduikers in her home.
• Pieter Schoorl and sheltered Jewish onderduikers.
• Henri Reynders (Dom Bruno), benedictine, From his abbey Keizersberg in Leuven, he created and operated a underground network and assisted in the rescue of almost 400 Jewish children.
• Julia Schuyten en her husband Klaas Sluys gave refuge to various Jews in Boechout and the surrounding area.
• Philomène Smeers (Zuster Marie-Véronique) hid Jewish students Simone Suzanne Berman and Ilse Frumer in the monastery.
• Walter Süskind was a German Jew from Dutch parents who helped approximately 600 Jewish children escape Jewish persecution.
• Armand Thiéry (priest and professor emeritus experimental psychology at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) gave refugee aid to Jewish people near Heverlee-Leuven.
• Jean & Leonie De Winne and their daughter Mariette offered refuge to Marie Zelieznikas.
• Alphonse Walraff and wedded partner Schildermans Elisabet hid the Jewish family of Abraham Friedman in their home near Neerpelt.

Literature

• P. Sanders, Het Nationaal Steun Fonds, bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van de financiering van het verzet 1941-1945, publ. Nijhoff, Den Haag, 1960.

See also

• Dutch resistance
• Nationaal Onderduikmuseum (Aalten)
• Het Verscholen Dorp (lit. The hidden Village, a hiding place for onderduikers on the Veluwe)
• Onderduikershol (Valthe)
• Safe house

External links

• Information on Geschiedenis24
• Information on TweedeWereldoorlog.nl
• National Onderduik museum, Aalten

Appendix

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