Blood Night from Sneek

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The Oorlogsmonument in Sneek, which is also on the bloody night of Sneek recalls

The Blood Night of Sneek ( Dutch Sneker Bloednacht ) is a war crime that occurred in the Dutch city of Sneek ( province of Friesland ) in 1944 during the Nazi era and during the German occupation of the Netherlands . On the night of July 13-14, four Sneek residents were shot dead in retaliation for killing a collaborator .

history

On May 21, 1944, a football match between the national teams of North Holland and Friesland took place in the stadium on Leeuwarder Weg in Sneek . Many thousands of spectators were expected, but there were also warnings of a raid by the Germans. Around 10,000 people came to watch the game. Meanwhile the stadium was surrounded by soldiers of the Wehrmacht . After the football game ended, they checked the personal details of all men at the exit to find those who had evaded work in Germany. After this measure was announced by megaphone, panic broke out among the men. Many hid under the stands, others pretended to be players or helpers. 24 men were arrested, including 21-year-old Willem Rienstra, who died the following year in Neuengamme concentration camp .

Three weeks after this stadium raid , on July 12, 1944, the Dutchman Gaele van der Kooij, who was considered a traitor because of his membership in the National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK), was kidnapped in Sneek by members of a local resistance group . The NSKK was a paramilitary sub-organization of the NSDAP and took in foreigners since 1941; in the Netherlands there were ultimately around 10,000 NSKK members.

Van der Kooij was later found shot dead in Scharnegoutum , a village three kilometers north of Sneek. The reason for his murder is said to have been that he accidentally overheard a conversation by Dutch resistance members in his garden. Allegedly van der Kooij was only supposed to be interrogated by his kidnappers, but then pulled a gun. However, according to a publication from 2014, he was shot four times without warning. Van der Kooij is said to have exclaimed: "Ik heb niets gedaan en oh nu ga ik dood" (Eng. = "I did nothing, and now I will die."). The wounded man was then taken to Scharnegoutum by car. There he was shot by one of these soldiers on a farm where Jews and Allied soldiers were hiding.

On the night of July 13-14, 1944, the NSKK retaliated for this killing. According to later testimony from members of the NSKK, around 35 NSKK men from Leeuwarden were summoned to the local commandant's office and given weapons without giving any reason . A man unknown to NSKK members also got on the transport bus. It was about Jan Ale Visser , a former medical student who was also a member of the NSKK and worked in the Netherlands for the security service of the Reichsführer SS (SD). Visser kept a list of 25 names of people from Sneek who were known to be "anti-German". The NSKKers, who were supported in their search by two members of the local Nationaal-Socialistische Bewegungs (NSB), found no one at most of the addresses, as many Sneekers had hidden for fear of retaliation. In the course of the night, four men whose names were on the list were found in their homes and shot; the shooter is said to have been Visser in all cases. To what extent the men from the NSKK were informed that people should be killed and whether they agreed to the shootings, the statements of those involved at the time differ.

Jan Tekelenburg, who lived near the Sneeker Martinikerk and was shot in his house, was killed, Jan Hendrik Bakker, who was taken from his house in the Wijde Noorderhorne in the city center and whose body was only found the next morning, Feike van der Heide , who was taken away from his parents' house in the city center and then shot, and Klaas Koelstra, who was shot on Leeuwarderweg .

Also on the death list was the later mayor of Sneek, Ludolf Rasterhoff , who was a community secretary and was active in the resistance. He was at home because his wife was seriously ill. Rasterhoff tried desperately to call the mayor and the police, but the intruders broke the phone. He was shot in the back of the head by Visser and his wife was shot in the hand. According to Rasterhoff's memory, Visser is said to have ordered his shooting with a curt “yes”, but his companion shrank from it, so that Visser finally shot himself. The perpetrators believed that Rasterhoff was dead, but that he survived and could be taken to a hospital. The bullet could not be seen on an X-ray of his head. It was only during later examinations that it turned out that the bullet was in the stomach because it had passed through the throat and Rasterhoff had swallowed it. After his recovery he resumed his work in the town hall without the occupiers intervening. After the Second World War he was mayor of Sneek from 1945 to 1970.

At the end of the war, Jan Ale Visser fled to the West Frisian island of Schiermonnikoog , where he and another man carried out two unsuccessful attacks on the interim mayor there. Visser, who was responsible for other deaths, was tried twice in the Netherlands and sentenced to death both times. Rasterhoff attended one of these trials as a spectator, and he later reported: “Dat was een aangrijpende zaak met een defilé van weduwen, ouders en familieleden van slachtoffers van Visser.” (Eng. = “That was a moving affair with a parade of widows , Parents and other family members of Visser's victims. ”) However, Visser was not executed, but pardoned to life imprisonment and finally released after 15 years with the condition that he would no longer enter the northern provinces of the Netherlands.

Work-up

The events of the Blood Night of Sneek are evidenced by various documents and the files of the criminal proceedings against Jan Ale Visser, which a.o. a. in the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation ( NIOD - Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie ; formerly RIOD - Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie ) in Amsterdam . In addition, the events found their way into several Dutch documentaries and historical works on the Second World War and the occupation in the Netherlands, such as the standard work Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog by the former RIOD institute director Loe de Jong , published from 1969 to 1991 , as well as in various Nonfiction and memory books. The contemporary witness reports and traditions of the perpetrators as well as the victims (of whom only Ludolf Rasterhoff survived) and their respective family and other surroundings differ in part.

In the master's thesis Ook zij presented in 2011 at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) were done. Nederlanders bij het National Socialist Motor Vehicle Corps (NSKK) In 1941 , the young Dutch historian Ralph Pluim u. a. also with the blood night of Sneek . The work was created in the subject of history, Holocaust and genocide studies at the UvA and was supervised by Johannes Houwink ten Cate .

Commemoration

A memorial plaque for the four victims of the Bloody Night is attached to the base of the Oorlogsmonument .

On September 24, 2007, a plaque with the names of the four men killed - Jan Hendrik Bakker, Feike van der Heide, Klaas Koelstra and Jan Tekelenburg - was placed on the base of the war memorial there in Sneek .

The Sneek war memorial commemorates the victims of the Second World War. It was built in its current form in 1950 and is located in the old cemetery next to the Martinikerk in Sneek. The memorial consists of a sculpture made of limestone, a nearly life-size female figure on a made Brick is masonry base. On a banner held by the female figure is the inscription Getrouw tot in de dood (dt. = Faithful to death ) and on the limestone pedestal of the sculpture is an inscription with the years 1940-1945 , which indicates the war period in the Netherlands reproduces. Since 1950, various memorial plaques have been placed on the brick base, including the commemorative plaque for the Blood Night of Sneek . This tablet reads in Dutch:

The nagedachtenis aan Jan Hendrik Bakker,
Feike van der Heide, Klaas Koelstra en
Jan Tekelenburg, omgekommen tijdens de
“Sneker bloednacht” from 13 to 14 July 1944.

(Ger. In memory of Jan Hendrik Bakker, Feike van der Heide, Klaas Koelstra and Jan Tekelenburg, who perished during the "Blood Night of Sneek" from July 13th to 14th, 1944. )

In the Martinikerk there is another plaque commemorating the Blood Night of Sneek .

Every year on Remembrance Day , which is celebrated in the Netherlands on May 4th, a commemoration in front of the war memorial takes place in Sneek , at which the dead of the Second World War - as well as the victims of the Blood Night of Sneek  - as well as later military operations are commemorated.

literature

  • HJA Hofland , Hans Keller, Hans Verhagen: Vastberaden maar soepel en met mate. Herinneringen aan Nederland 1938–1948 (=  Contact Tijdsdocumenten ). Contact, Amsterdam (Netherlands) 1976, ISBN 90-254-2037-0 , p. 124 ff. (Dutch).
  • Loe de Jong : Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog . Volume 7, Part 2: May 1943 – June 1944. Published by the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie. Martinus Nijhoff, 's-Gravenhage (Den Haag / Netherlands) 1976, p. 1276 (Dutch).
  • Jasper Keizer: De Sneker Bloednacht. In: The same: Serve onder het hakenkruis. Friezen in Duitse krijgsdienst. Friese Pers Boekerij, Leeuwarden (Netherlands) 2000, ISBN 90-330-1122-0 , pp. 121-124 (Dutch).
  • Ralph Pluim: Ook zij were done. Nederlanders bij National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK) het 1941. Master's thesis, University of Amsterdam (UvA), Amsterdam (Netherlands) 2011 (Dutch, as digitized at the UvA freely available online, PDF, 2.45 MB; accessed November 25, 2014. )

media

  • Oorlogsschriften.nl - online project of the Fries Verzetsmuseum ( Friesian Resistance Museum ), a department of the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden ; with the private records of the Second World War ( Oorlogsschriften ) by To Hofstra (1924–2011). The future teacher To Hofstra was born in Sneek and grew up there in the Wijde Noorderhorne ; she began during the war with diary-like records of daily events as well as happenings in Sneek and the Netherlands and continued this after the war. She supplemented her notes with a large number of newspaper articles from national and regional newspapers, brochures, letters, envelopes, coins, postage stamps, vouchers and many other materials, which she collected and, if necessary, cut and inserted. At the beginning of 2000, Hofstra handed over all of their documents to the Fries Verzetsmuseum in Leeuwarden, which didactically prepared Hofstras Oorlogs and published them as an educational website .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The football fan Willem Rienstra - murdered in Neuengamme concentration camp. FC St. Pauli , accessed on April 13, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Alex Dekker: Ook gij behoort bij ons! Het NSKK in de Lage Landen. Just, Meppel (Netherlands) 2013, ISBN 978-90-897524-2-0 , p. 7 (Dutch).
  3. ↑ Ralph Pluim: Ook zij were done. Nederlanders bij het National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK) 1941. (PDF, 2.45 MB) Master's thesis at the University of Amsterdam , Amsterdam 2011, p. 53 , accessed on November 21, 2014 (Dutch).
  4. ↑ Ralph Pluim: Ook zij were done. Nederlanders bij het National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK) 1941. (PDF, 2.45 MB) Master's thesis at the University of Amsterdam , Amsterdam 2011, p. 51 , accessed on November 21, 2014 (Dutch).
  5. ↑ Ralph Pluim: Ook zij were done. Nederlanders bij het National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK) 1941. (PDF, 2.45 MB) Master's thesis at the University of Amsterdam , Amsterdam 2011, pp. 51–53 , accessed on November 21, 2014 (Dutch).
  6. ↑ a b c d Ludolf Rasterhoff. (No longer available online.) Spanvis, archived from the original on December 3, 2015 ; Retrieved December 3, 2015 (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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.spanvis.nl
  7. ↑ L. Vogelaar: Opnieuw poging oorlogsmisdadiger in handen te krijgen. RD.nl - online portal of the Dutch daily Reformatorisch Dagblad , November 25, 2010, accessed on November 21, 2014 (Dutch).
  8. ↑ Friese Verzetsstrijders, bevrijders en other betrokkenen. - H - (→ Feike van der Heide / Ludolf Rasterhoff). (No longer available online.) Spanvis.nl, archived from the original on February 18, 2016 ; Retrieved February 18, 2016 (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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.spanvis.nl
  9. ↑ a b cf. Ralph Pluim: Ook zij were done. Nederlanders bij het National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK) 1941. (PDF, 2.45 MB) Master's thesis at the University of Amsterdam , Amsterdam 2011, accessed on November 25, 2014 (Dutch).
  10. ↑ a b Sneek, oorlogsmonument. (No longer available online.) Online portal of the Dutch government organization Nationaal Comité 4 en 5 mei , archived from the original on December 5, 2014 ; Retrieved November 26, 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.4en5mei.nl