Dutch-Paris

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Dutch-Paris is the name of a Western European escape network during World War II that brought more than 1,000 persecuted people from the German- occupied Netherlands , Belgium and France to either Switzerland or Spain . These included around 800 Jews, more than 100 crew members from downed Allied aircraft and numerous other people.

Origin, functionality and effect

Weidner in Schiphol, March 29, 1967

After the western campaign , which ended with the occupation of the Benelux countries and the armistice of Compiègne , Johan Hendrik Weidner , a Dutch businessman living in Paris , was no longer able to join the Allied troops and so he ran his company from Lyon and Annecy from further. As a devout Seventh-day Adventist , it was important to him to help his fellow man through action. That is why the passionate mountaineer, who grew up on the Swiss border in Collonges sous Salève , and friends built up the escape network, which has not been named for reasons of secrecy, from 1941 onwards, in order to bring persecuted people to safety through France and then on impassable mountain paths either to Switzerland or over the Pyrenees to Spain . The network succeeded in getting around 800 Jews , more than 100 shot down Allied crew members and numerous other people across the borders. During the heyday it consisted of up to 300 escape helpers, of whom around 150 were captured.

It was financed by secret transfers of money from the Dutch government in exile and allied secret services via the Dutch embassy in Switzerland and by Willem Adolf Visser 't Hooft from the World Council of Churches in Geneva. The network also carried classified information from the Netherlands to Switzerland and vice versa in what was known as The Swiss Way . Important collaborators were Jacques Rens, Edmond Chait, Suzanne Hiltermann-Souloumiac, Jef Lejeune, Paul Veerman, Benno Nijkerk, Hans Wisbrun, Aan de Stegge, Vital Dreyfus and Herman Laatsman from the former Dutch embassy in Paris, who brought in his own underground network in 1943 . One day when an Allied pilot asked Laatsman for the name of the network, the latter allegedly replied Dutch in Paris (Dutch in Paris), which gave rise to the name Dutch-Paris.

Important refugees were a. François de Menthon , Gerrit Jan van Heuven Goedhart and Xavier de Gaulle.

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