Bill Minco

Bill Minco (2005)

Sebil "Bill" Minco (born May 21, 1922 in Almelo ; † May 5, 2006 in Hilversum ) was a Dutch resistance fighter during the German occupation in World War II and later a local politician.

Occupation and detention

Bill Minco came from a Jewish family who ran a men's clothing company for which his father was an agent. He grew up in Almelo, Groningen and Rotterdam. He was still a student when he joined the resistance against the German occupiers after the bombing of Rotterdam in 1940 , which he observed from the roof of his school. On January 7, 1941, at the age of 18, he was arrested by the Germans for making drawings of military installations around Rotterdam and imprisoned at the Oranjehotel . On March 4th of the same year he was sentenced to death by the Geuzen group along with 17 other men . This group was later immortalized in literature by Jan Campert in the poem De Achttien doden . Since Minco was still a minor, his death sentence was commuted to life . Apparently, however, he witnessed the shooting of the 17 other men on Waalsdorpervlakte , as he describes them in his memoirs.

Minco was held in several concentration camps - Mauthausen , Auschwitz and Dachau ; He had to spend 18 months in solitary confinement in the Untermaßfeld prison near Meiningen ( Thuringia ) and during this time he learned Goethe's Faust by heart. He attributed the fact that he survived the end of the war to the fact that he was not viewed as a Jew but as a political prisoner, as well as the support of the Rotterdam boxer Leen Sanders : “ Dat ik Auschwitz en de te volgen period overleefde, heb ik te thank aan de Rotterdamse bokser Leen Sanders, die dankzij een boksende SS-er enigszins een uitzonderingspositie innam, en die mij als mede-Rotterdammer bij voortduring de hand boven het hoofd hield. "(German:" That I survived Auschwitz and the following time, I owe the Rotterdam boxer Leen Sanders, who, thanks to a boxing SS man, assumed a somewhat unusual position and constantly held his protective hand over me. ") He belonged in Mauthausen to the eight Jews who survived the imprisonment there.

Subsequently, Minco was placed in a hospital in Davos because of tuberculosis . Presumably there he wrote the book Koude voeten, begenadigd tot levenslang , in which he reported on his time in the resistance and the concentration camps. The book was first published in a revised version in 1997. The book title alludes to the fact that Minco always had cold feet from then on due to the illnesses during his captivity.

After the war

Minco brought this stone back from Mauthausen.

After the war, Bill Minco was involved in founding the Geuzenverzet Foundation , of which he was also chairman, in the Oranjehotel Foundation and for the Nationaal Oorlogs- en Verzetsmuseum in Overloon . Throughout his life, he sat committed to preserve the memory of the Second World War alive, but also for reconciliation between Germans and Dutch, for which he with the 1999 Order of Merit, First Class was awarded to him by Ambassador Eberhard von Puttkamer handed has been. In 1995 he accompanied Queen Beatrix and Prince Claus to the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. He was also politically active in the Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie and sat on the Hilversum municipal council from 1957 to 1982 . From 1978 to 1982 he was municipal councilor for finance, business and sports. Professionally, he successfully ran a bed business.

Minco had it determined in his will that his ashes would be scattered on the Waalsdorpervlakte. In Vlaardingen a square is named after him, and in Hilversum a stone can be seen in the “Gedenkt te Sterven” cemetery that he brought back to the Mauthausen quarries, where he himself had to do forced labor. Since 2012 , a Bill Minco-lezing has been held in Hilversum on May 4th, the Dutch National Day of Mourning , in which people from Hilversum report on their experiences from the occupation.

Bill Minco was a great-uncle of the writer Marga Minco .

Web links

Commons : Bill Minco  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Read Schneiders: Jezelf durven aankijken: sprek met oud-verzetsman Bill Minco. psychotraumanet, accessed October 11, 2014 (Dutch). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Bill (Sebil) Minco (Almelo, 1922). Auschwitz Bulletin, January 1, 2006, accessed October 11, 2014 (Dutch). 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Bill Minco. RTi Hilversum, April 27, 2014, accessed October 11, 2014 . 
3. ↑ In some sources Amersfoort is given as the place of death.
4. ^ ^{A b c} Yehudi Lindemann / Hans de Vries: Therefore Be Courageous, Too. Jewish Resistance and Rescue in the Netherlands . In: Patrick Henry (ed.): Jewish Resistance Against the Nazis . The Catholic University of America Press, 2014, pp. 199 f . ( books.google.de ).
5. ↑ leen sanders - terug in Rotterdam (1985), page 2. (No longer available online.) Joodsamsterdam.nl, archived from the original on October 6, 2014 ; Retrieved October 1, 2014 (Dutch). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ↑ ^{a b c d} Joodse verzetsman Bill Minco overleden. NIK, May 14, 2006, accessed October 10, 2014 (Dutch). 
7. ^ Bill Minco-lezing op 4 mei in Hilversum. (No longer available online.) De Gooien Eemlander, March 21, 2012, archived from the original on October 18, 2014 ; Retrieved October 11, 2014 (Dutch). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
8. ↑ Han van Gessel: Daughter door de hel. de Volkskrant, May 2, 1997, accessed October 10, 2014 (Dutch).