Boy Ecury

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Boy Ecury

Segundo Jorge Adelberto "Boy" Ecury (born April 23, 1922 in Oranjestad , † November 6, 1944 in The Hague ) was a Dutch resistance fighter against the German occupation during the Second World War .

Youth and education

Boy Ecury was born in Aruba , the seventh of 13 children to a distinguished Catholic family ; his father was the wealthy businessman Dundun Ecury. In 1937, the son, accompanied by his father and two siblings, traveled to the Netherlands to obtain his commercial diploma at the Instituut Saint-Louis in Oudenbosch . There he and his siblings - another sister came later - confronted with racism: Many Dutch people had never seen colored people and it was also not known that residents of Aruba are Dutch citizens: Boy was stared at, teased and also called " Negro "insulted.

Activities in resistance

During the occupation of the Netherlands by the Germans, Ecury and friends, including Luis de Lannoy and Delfincio Navarro from Curaçao , were active in the resistance from 1940 under the name Max Ernst . The young men communicated by letter on Papiamentu and jointly planned attacks with fire bombs on German trucks, derailed trains, helped people hiding in Tilburg and Allied pilots and carried out other attacks for resistance groups in The Hague. In 1942 Ecury went into hiding and lived at different addresses in Delft and Rotterdam and eventually became a member of a resistance group in Oisterwijk . After his friend De Lannoy was betrayed and imprisoned on February 10, 1944, Ecury tried to free him, but failed. Since Ecury was noticeable by the color of his skin in little Oisterwijk, at the end of 1944 he joined a resistance group in The Hague, where he planned and prepared actions, including the killing of a member of the fascist NSB .

After Boy Ecury attended a mass in the Rotterdam Cathedral on Sunday 5 November 1944, he was arrested right in front of the security service building . Ecury himself had already had a premonition and in September brought his two sisters, who were staying in Voorburg , a farewell letter for their parents. The sisters had tried to prevent him from doing anything else, but he is said to have replied: “Who should do it if not me. I'm not dependent on anyone. ”He was probably betrayed by an acquaintance from the Resistance, Kees Bitter . But it is also possible that he was recognized. On the same day he was brought to the Oranjehotel in Scheveningen and executed the next day at the age of 22 along with seven other resistance fighters on Waalsdorpervlakte .

memory

Monument to Boy Ecury in Oranjestad

In 1947, Ecury's remains were buried with military honors in Aruba in a magnificent marble tomb. In November 1949 a street on Curaçao was named after Boy Ecury and a memorial of him was unveiled on Lloyd G. Smith Boulevard in Oranjestad, Aruba. Part of the exhibition in the War Museum in Oranjestad is dedicated to him. In 1984 Ecury was posthumously awarded the Verzetsherdenkingskruis . In 2002, Aruba issued a series of stamps in his honor. In 2010 a street in Oisterwijk was named after him. The Archaeological Museum of Aruba is now located in the former house of the Ecury family.

His nephew, filmmaker Ted Schouten , made a documentary about his uncle and wrote a book about him, first published in 1985 and published by the Aruba government: Boy Ecury, een Antilliaanse jongen in het verzet . In 2003 he made a feature film about Boy Ecury with Frans Weisz .

Books and films

  • Boy Ecury, een Antilliaanse jongen in het verzet , Ted Schouten, ISBN 90-5730-242-X , Walburg Pers, 1985.
  • Boy Ecury, een Antilliaanse jongen in het verzet , documentary film by Ted Schouten, 1985.
  • Boy Ecury , feature film, director Frans Weisz, 2003. Golden Calf 2003 .

Web links

Commons : Boy Ecury  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Boy Ecury, National Hero Of World War II. Visit Aruba, accessed October 8, 2014 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Giselle Ecury: werkgroep caraïbische letters. werkgroep caraïbische letteren, May 7, 2010, accessed on October 8, 2014 (Dutch).
  3. ^ Bill Moyer: The Story of Boy Ecury. lago-colony.com, accessed October 8, 2014 .
  4. ↑ Boy Ecury. Oisterwijk in Beeld, accessed October 8, 2014 (Dutch).
  5. ^ Archaeological Museum. aruba.com, accessed October 8, 2014 .
  6. ↑ Boy Ecury. (No longer available online.) Nederlands Film Festival, archived from the original on March 6, 2016 ; Retrieved October 8, 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.filmfestival.nl
personal data
SURNAME Ecury, boy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ecury, Segundo Jorge Adelberto (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Oranjestad
DATE OF DEATH November 6, 1944
Place of death The hague