Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema

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Willem van de Poll : Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema (image detail, 1945)

Siebren Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema (born April 3, 1917 in Surabaya , † September 26, 2007 in Āhualoa , Hawaii ), called Soldaat van Oranje , was a Dutch writer, resistance fighter and fighter pilot in the British Royal Air Force at the time of World War II . He was best known for his autobiographical novel Het hol van de ratelslang , in which he processed his war experiences and which was later made into a film by director Paul Verhoeven under the title The Soldier of Orange .

Life

Early years

Hazelhoff Roelfzema was born in 1917 as the second child of a manager of coffee and rubber tree plantations on the island of Java , which at that time was still part of the Dutch East Indies colony . In the 1930s the family moved back to the Netherlands in order to be able to offer the children a better education. 1937 Hazel Roelfzema began studying law at the University of Leiden , where he among other things, the fraternity joined Minerva. He frequently interrupted his studies for various stays abroad, including a tour of the United States and a job as a correspondent in Finland , where he reported on the raging winter war there in 1939 and 1940 . He processed these trips into his first two books Rendezvous in San Francisco (1939) and Het smeulende vuur (1941, in German: "The smoldering fire"), the former becoming a bestseller. However, his career as a writer was interrupted as early as 1940 when the German Wehrmacht invaded the Netherlands.

Study time and escape to England

Almost immediately after the surrender of the Netherlands, Hazelhoff Roelfzema joined the local resistance . During this time he tried several times by boat as one of the so-called Engelandvaarders (in German "Englandsegler") to cross the English Channel to England , but this repeatedly failed. In February 1941 he put a leaflet into circulation at his own expense, the so-called Leids Manifesto , in which he made a number of demands regarding the way the occupiers should deal with the University of Leiden. Among other things, he called for the ban on political signs and insignia as well as the waiver of compulsory courses to be attended, which was undoubtedly directed against any National Socialist influence on the student body. As a result, Hazelhoff Roelfzema was arrested at the beginning of April 1941 and held in the Scheveningen remand prison - the notorious Oranjehotel - for about a week . After his release, Hazelhoff Roelfzema decided to go into hiding for some time in Amsterdam to be on the safe side, but it was still possible for him to do his doctorate in June 1941 at the University of Leiden, which had since reopened. As a result, however, he decided to try again to flee to England. Through his contacts with the resistance, he was finally able to secure a place on the Swiss freighter SS St. Cergue , which sailed for New York in July 1941, under the Panamanian flag but on behalf of the Germans . During the crossing, the ship was stopped by the British cruiser HMS Devonshire and forced to a stop in Tórshavn in the Faroe Islands , as the British correctly assumed that the ship was sailing for the Germans. From here Hazelhoff Roelfzema finally made it to London .

Activities in England

A motor torpedo boat of the same type that Hazelhoff Roelfzema and his comrades used for their trips to the Dutch coast.

In London, Hazelhoff Roelfzema became a member of The Mews , an intelligence group consisting of Dutch refugees under the leadership of François van 't Sant , director of the Dutch intelligence agency Centrale Inlichtingendienst . The name of the group referred to the Royal Mews neighborhood in London , where most of its members lived. As part of The Mews , Hazelhoff Roelfzema, together with his former classmates Peter Tazelaar and Christoffel Krediet, carried out Operation Contact Holland to support the Dutch resistance. During the night, they crossed the English Channel with motor torpedo boats and delivered radio equipment to the resistance fighters. Furthermore, they carried out operations to extract resistance members from the occupied Netherlands. One of these missions had the undiscovered smuggling of Tazelaar - disguised as a drunken guest at a party in a Scheveningen hotel - and his return with two rescued resistance fighters two months later. Although the repatriation was prevented by the security police, Tazelaar returned to England a few months later by other means. Years later, the action is said to have served as the inspiration for the opening scene in the James Bond film Goldfinger .

RAF pilot

In November 1942 Hazelhoff Roelfzema signed up for pilot training with the Royal Air Force, where he was first trained in Cambridge on the de Havilland Tiger Moth . He was then transferred to Canada , where he took part in a training course to qualify as a fighter pilot . He flew a Noorduyn Harvard IIb and received an award as the best pilot on his course. After completing his pilot training, Hazelhoff Roelfzema returned to London in 1944, where he was recruited for the Pathfinder Force . This was a 1943 reorganized formation of the RAF Bomber Command , which should set target markings for bomber units. It was stationed at No. 139 (Jamaica) Squadron at RAF Upwood Air Force Base, which was equipped with de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito fighter planes . With the Jamaica Squadron, Hazelhoff Roelfzema flew a total of 72 missions by the end of the war, including 25 with the destination Berlin . He did a large part of it together with his school friend Ben Hein as navigator, which made the two of them the only completely Dutch flight crew of the Pathfinder Force. For his services during these missions he received both the British and the Dutch Aviation Cross.

Queen's Adjutant

Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema (second from left) on Queen Wilhelmina's return to the Netherlands

In April 1945 the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina Hazelhoff appointed Roelfzema and his friend Peter Tazelaar as her personal adjutants. In this position Hazelhoff Roelfzema flew the princess and her family back to the liberated Netherlands. Although he refused long-term employment at the court, he remained closely associated with the royal family for life. He was particularly good friends with Prince Bernhard . During the inauguration of Queen Beatrix in 1980, Hazelhoff Roelfzema assumed the office of heraldic king .

Life after the war and success as a writer

After the end of the war and his work for the Dutch royal family, Hazelhoff Roelfzema first moved to the United States and acquired citizenship there. Here he worked for American television, including as a writer for the first Today Show and the Tonight Show . In the 1950s Hazelhoff Roelfzema worked in Munich for the anti-communist broadcaster Radio Free Europe , where, curiously, he worked with Joseph Schreieder , the former head of the counter-espionage department of the SD in the Netherlands. During the war, Schreieder was one of the main players in the so-called " England Game" and thus played a key role in the hunt for Hazelhoff Roelfzema and his comrades. At the end of the 1960s, Hazelhoff Roelfzema wrote an autobiographical book about his experiences during the Second World War - allegedly out of financial difficulties. This work, which initially appeared under the title Het hol van de ratelslang (in German: "The Hole of the Rattlesnake") and later as Soldaat van Oranje , became a bestseller with more than a million copies sold. In 1977 the book was made into a film by director Paul Verhoeven with actor Rutger Hauer in the leading role. An extremely successful adaptation of the work in the form of a musical followed in 2010 , which has since been performed in a specially built 360 ° theater. With 2.8 million visitors, it is the most successful musical in Dutch history, and since November 2015 the production has also been the longest-lived in the history of the country.

In 1971 Hazelhoff Roelfzema retired in Hawaii and also held a seat on the board of directors of Barnwell Industries , an American company for the exploitation of oil and gas reserves. He finally died in 2007 at the age of 90, leaving behind a wife and two children. His ashes were partly buried in the last place he lived in Hawaii and partly in a cemetery in Wassenaar , the Netherlands , where his grave is right next to a memorial stone for victims of the war.

plant

  • Rendezvous in San Francisco . Sijthoff, Leiden 1939.
  • Het smeulende vuur . Sijthoff, Leiden 1941.
  • Het get van de ratelslang . De Geillustreerde Pers, Amsterdam 1970. ( Published again in 1971 in a revised version under the title Soldaat van Oranje .)
  • De verre tamboer - Soldaat van Oranje zwaait af . Stok, The Hague 1973, ISBN 90-235-8078-8 .
  • Op jacht naar het leven - An autobiography van de Soldaat van Oranje . Spectrum, Utrecht 2000, ISBN 90-274-6862-1 .

Awards and honors

Hazelhoff Roelfzemas ribbon buckle with his military awards

Hazelhoff Roelfzema is considered one of the greatest national war heroes from the time of the Second World War in the Netherlands and was accordingly highly decorated in military terms. Due to his work both for the Dutch armed forces and as a pilot for the RAF, he received numerous awards from both countries, among others he was accepted by Queen Wilhelmina to the rank of Knight IV Class of the Military Wilhelms Order :

Netherlands

  • Knight IV class of the Military Wilhelms Order ( inauguration text : "Secret orders carried out at great risk to life.")
  • Cross of Merit (Inauguration text: "Due to the careful preparation and implementation of an escape plan from the occupied Netherlands, which enabled England to be reached after many difficulties.")
  • Fliegerkreuz (Inauguration text: "As part of the Royal Air Force of the United Kingdom, courage, perseverance, competence and the fulfillment of duty demonstrated during combat flights against the enemy.")
  • Oorlogsherinneringskruis with two clips
  • Verzetsherdenkingskruis

United Kingdom

In addition to the military awards, the Netherland-America Foundation presented him with the Dutch American Heritage Award in 2004 for services to the Dutch-American community. In his home country the viewers of the television program chose him De Grootste Nederlander radio station KRO number 39 of the most important Dutch all time. In addition, a section of the beach in the coastal town of Scheveningen , where Hazelhoff Roelfzema and his comrades regularly landed their boats during the war, bears the name Soldaat van Oranjestrand in his honor . According to his own statements, Hazelhoff Roelfzema did not see himself as a particularly outstanding soldier. In an interview with De Telegraaf newspaper in July 2006, he put the following quote on record:

“Eighth iedere soldaat met talrijke militaire onderscheidingen staan ​​honderden anonieme heroes. Ik had het geluk herkend te, en oud. "

“Behind every soldier with numerous military awards, there are hundreds of anonymous heroes. I was lucky enough to be recognized and to grow old. "

- Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema : De Telegraaf, July 2006

Literature Prize

Since 2010 the foundation "Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema Prijs" (since 2018 officially foundation "Nederlandse Biografieprijs") has been awarding a prize every two years for the best new biography and for the best new dissertation or master's thesis in Dutch or Frisian .

Web links

Commons : Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema: Soldaat van Oranje. In: isgeschiedenis.nl. Retrieved February 1, 2019 (Dutch).
  2. ↑ Hazelhoff Roelfzema, Erik. In: suffer4045.nl. April 17, 2018, accessed February 6, 2019 (Dutch).
  3. ↑ St. Cergue History. In: swiss-ships.ch. August 2013, accessed on February 14, 2019 .
  4. ^ Loe de Jong: Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog . Ed .: Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie. tape 9 , no. 2 . Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague 1979, ISBN 90-247-2200-4 , pp. 895-911 .
  5. ^ David Harrison: The secret war mission that inspired Goldfinger scene. In: telegraph.co.uk. The Telegraph, April 17, 2010, accessed March 12, 2019 .
  6. ^ Ross Sharp: Soldier of Orange - Erik Hazelhoff-Roelfzema. (PDF) In: erikhazelhoffroelfzema.com. Retrieved March 13, 2019 .
  7. ^ Yfke Nijland, Gerda Jansen Hendriks: De ware soldiers van Oranje. In: andersetijden.nl. Retrieved March 13, 2019 (Dutch).
  8. ↑ Lennert Savenije: Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema - The "Soldier of Orange". In: uni-muenster.de. NetherlandsNet, December 2008, accessed March 13, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Tabberd Wapenkoningen. In: hethuisvanoranje.nl. Retrieved March 13, 2019 (Dutch).
  10. ↑ a b c Dennis Hevesi: Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, a 'Soldier of Orange,' Is Dead at 90. In: nytimes.com. The New York Times, October 8, 2007, accessed March 13, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Curtis Lum: Hazelhoff-Roelfzema, Barnwell exec, 90. In: honoluluadvertiser.com. The Honolulu Advertiser, September 28, 2007, accessed March 13, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Commemoration: “Soldier of Orange” has died. In: uni-muenster.de. NetherlandsNet, October 1, 2007, accessed March 22, 2019 .
  13. ↑ Oorlogsheld zonder kapsones. In: mareonline.nl. April 25, 2002, accessed March 13, 2019 (Dutch).
  14. ↑ Verhaal. In: soldaatvanoranje.nl. Retrieved March 13, 2019 (Dutch).
  15. ↑ Rick Baron: Soldaat van Oranje Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema also has other dag van mooie natuur in Wassenaar. In: libertytour.nllibertytour.nl. Retrieved March 22, 2019 (Dutch).
  16. ↑ Hazelhoff-Roelfzema, mr., Siebren Erik. In: tracesofwar.nl. Accessed February 1, 2019 .
  17. ↑ Militaire Willems-Orde: Hazelhoff Roelfzema, mr. SE In: defensie.nl. Ministerie van defensie, accessed February 1, 2019 (Dutch).
  18. ↑ Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema. In: thenaf.org. The Netherland-America Foundation, accessed February 1, 2019 (Dutch).
  19. ^ De Grootste Nederlander ( Memento of October 14, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
  20. ↑ Teije Terhorst: Soldaat van Oranje beach. In: tracesofwar.nl. Retrieved February 14, 2019 (Dutch).
  21. ↑ Over de prijs. In: biografieprijs.nl. Stichting Nederlandse Biografieprijs, accessed on February 1, 2019 (Dutch).
  22. ↑ Prijswinnars. In: biografieprijs.nl. Stichting Nederlandse Biografieprijs, accessed on February 1, 2019 (Dutch).


personal data
SURNAME Hazelhoff Roelfzema, Erik
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hazelhoff Roelfzema, Siebren Erik (full name); Soldaat van Oranje (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch writer, resistance fighter and fighter pilot
DATE OF BIRTH April 3, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Surabaya
DATE OF DEATH September 26, 2007
Place of death Āhualoa , Hawaii