Ten from Renesse
The Ten von Renesse were Dutch resistance fighters against National Socialism on the island of Schouwen-Duiveland in Zeeland during the Second World War . They were hanged by the German Wehrmacht on December 10, 1944 in the town of Renesse . The members of the group, all devout followers of the Reformed Church , were Menke Koos van der Beek, Iman Marinus van der Bijl, Willem Maarten Boot, Joost Pieter Jonker, Leendert Marie Jonker, Marcus Pieter Machiel van der Klooster, Johannis Oudkerk, Cornelis Lazonder, Jan Andreas Verhoeff and Adriaan Martijn Padmos.
Historical background
Schouwen-Duiveland remained occupied by the German Wehrmacht until May 1945, while the rest of the province of Zeeland was liberated in the last months of 1944. On December 2, 1944, the German leadership of Schouwen-Duiveland announced that all men between 17 and 40 years of age in Germany would have to work as slave labor in the war industry. The officials of the still inhabited villages on Schouwen-Duiveland were commissioned to draw up lists of the names and places of residence of these men. Two officials from the municipality of Renesse enabled the resistance to take the residents' lists with them and bury them, and then went into hiding. That wasn't easy because a third of the island had been submerged by the Wehrmacht. The occupiers reacted angrily to the incident.
Escape attempt to Noord-Beveland
The leaders of the resistance on the island, with the support of the Allied allies, forged a plan to transport 17 people to the liberated island of Noord-Beveland by ship at night . They had excellent information about the armament of the Wehrmacht: artillery , minefields and machine gun positions . This knowledge could also be useful to the Allies in the conquest of Schouwen-Duiveland. Because of the increased German pressure, the difficulty of going into hiding and the possession of the secret war information about the German military situation on the islands, the leadership of the resistance gave the order to bring the people to Noord-Beveland. The seventeen included the two municipal officials from Renesse, people in hiding and resistance fighters from various villages on Schouwen-Duiveland, a deserted Armenian, a Dutch member of an English commando and two Allied soldiers.
The dike southwest of Zierikzee had been agreed as the meeting point . The first attempt on December 6, 1944 failed because of the bad winter weather. On December 7, 1944, the seventeen made a second attempt at the same place and time. Because there was no contact with the ship, the mussel cutter BRU 34, they decided to return home in small groups. This resulted in a battle with German soldiers. Six people escaped, the others were captured by the Germans. They were brought by ship from Brouwershaven to Goeree-Overflakkee . The Armenian soldier drowned while driving. One of the community officials, Cornelis Lazonder, was seriously wounded and taken to the Zierikzee hospital.
Imprisonment and execution
Despite more than two days without food or drink and severe torture , none of the ten suspects mentioned the name of a friend from the resistance. The nine men transferred to Goeree-Overflakkee, including Lazonder, were sentenced to death by hanging by a court martial on the night of December 8th to 9th, 1944 .
The police officer Christiaan Wisse from Brouwershaven and his wife, two of the seventeen, escaped and went into hiding. After the war, Christiaan Wisse worked for the Koninklijke Marechaussee as an investigative officer and was assigned to the Politieke Recherche Afdeling in Zierikzee. From August to October 1945 he wrote a report on the Ten of Renesse to help convict the war criminals .
A witness quoted by Wisse reported that the district commandant Hauptmann Becker read the judgment of the court martial . The ten men had been sentenced to death by hanging for attempting to contact the enemy and giving military information into the hands of the enemy. In addition, all of the condemned's property would be confiscated while their homes were about to be burned.
Lazonder was badly wounded and should be hanged as soon as he had recovered a little. The bodies were to be hung twice for 24 hours as a deterrent to the onlookers and then buried.
After the execution, Captain Becker announced that if there was further resistance to the Wehrmacht or sabotage, an even larger number of people would be arrested and hanged.
Ds. HC Voorneveld, reformed pastor in Haamstede , gave the nine men spiritual support in a bunker in Haamstede Castle. After reading Psalm 23 and 91 , they sang together. A strong castle is our God . The sentence was carried out at the entrance to Moermond Castle in Renesse on Sunday, December 10, 1944 at 12 noon.
Lazonder, severely wounded, watched as his nine friends were hanged. He died the next day and his body was hung next to the others. Unprepared family members and citizens from every parish on the island were forced to walk past the hanged man shortly after the execution. One of them was Hendrik Verhoeff from Brouwershaven, who had to see his dead son Jan Andreas.
aftermath
The occupiers threatened to hang other citizens of the island if the six refugees were not handed over to them within 48 hours. Four of them came forward and were captured. Both she and the two who remained in hiding survived the war. The corpses of the ten remained hung up for two days and were then not buried in coffins in the Renesse cemetery, but rather buried in a mass grave.
memorial
The Amsterdam sculptor Jan Havermans created a memorial to the Ten of Renesse, which was unveiled on May 4, 1949 at the entrance to Renesse's cemetery. The students from the local elementary school 't Staepel'of took part in the memorial ceremony with poems and drawings. They place a wreath on the monument. Until 2009, the official memorial for the Ten von Renesse was on December 10th. After the death of the last survivor, it was decided in 2010 to combine the official commemoration with the national memorial day on May 4th. At the place of execution there is a memorial stone, a boulder. The story of the Ten by Renesse is described on a board in three languages: Dutch, English and German.
Judgment by Loe de Jong
Loe de Jong , author of a standard work on the time of the Second World War , writes: “Before that, we wrote that what happened in Putten was characteristic of the mentality that prevailed in parts of the Wehrmacht, and we already pointed it out to the reader there that we wanted to address another event in this context: the hanging of ten residents of Schouwen in Renesse, 'the only known case', we wrote, 'in which, apart from a limited number of hangings in the Vught concentration camp , this one Form of the death penalty was used by the Germans in the occupied Netherlands. ' By the way, what happened in Renesse was also very shocking in other respects, even repulsive ”.
literature
- Huib Vriesendorp u. a .: Schouwen-Duiveland was established in 1944 . In: Vereniging Stad en Lande van Schouwen-Duiveland (ed.): Kroniek van het land van de zeemermin (Schouwen-Duiveland) . tape 34 . Zierikzee 2009, p. 75–102 ( Schouwen-Duiveland revised 1944-revisited , 2011 - PDF file (41 MB) ).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dutch Institute for War Documentation : Doc II-860a12 / verzet Zeeland ( digitized version )
- ↑ L. de Jong: Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog , 14 parts, 1969–1991, SDU-Verlag, The Hague, part 10b, first half, page 68 (“Eerder schreven wij dat wat in Putten is geschied, tekenend is geweest voor de mentaliteit in delen van de Wehrmacht was gaan heersen en wij wezen de lezer er toen reeds op dat wij in the association nog een tweede gebeuren wild treated: het ophangen in Renesse van tien inwoners van Schouwen, 'het some ons bekende geval ', schreven wij,' waarbij, afgezien van een beperkt aantal ophangingen in het concentratiekamp Vught, deze vorm van de doodstraf door de Duitsers in bezet Nederland is toegepast. 'Wat zich te Renesse heeft afgespeeld, is trouwens in other opzichten mate choking, yes stuitend geweest. ", PDF file (14 MB) )