Westerweel group

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Joop Westerweel

The Westerweel group was a Dutch resistance group during the Nazi era . The group was founded in 1942 around the convinced pacifist and teacher Joop Westerweel and existed after his death until the end of the war . The members of the Westerweel group organized identity papers , hiding places and escape routes, especially for Jewish children and young people who had fled Nazi Germany . The group was unusual in that it consisted of Jews and non-Jews who worked together to save Jewish lives.

Members

The non-Jewish members were a small group of Dutch people, mainly friends, acquaintances and colleagues of Joop. The Jewish members were in their teens or twenties . In addition, there was a share of young Halutzim ( Zionist youth movement), including Max Windmüller and Menachem Pinkhof .

The name

The name Gruppe Westerweel was only adopted after the end of the war by former members in honor of Joop Westerweel. As long as it existed, it had no fixed name.

Actions

When the German occupiers began to deport Dutch Jews in 1942 , Westerweel met a small group of young Zionists ( Halutzim ) around Joachim ("Schuschu") Simon, who were looking to live in Israel on a farm near his home prepared. He immediately started organizing hiding places for the young Halutzim and by early August 60 of them were in hiding.

Then Westerweel and Simon began to sound out ways for the young people to escape. They succeeded in doing this on routes through Belgium , France , Switzerland and Spain . Simon traveled to France in 1942 to make contact with the Jewish underground. In December 1942 and January 1943 the first groups of Halutzim were smuggled into France via Belgium. From there they were able to flee over the green border to Spain. During one of these actions, Simon was arrested by the Germans in January 1943 in the south of the Netherlands and died in custody.

The news of Simon's death spurred the activities of the Westerweel group, which soon numbered 20 members. In February 1944, Westerweel accompanied a Halutzim group to the French-Spanish border in the Pyrenees . Less than a month later, he himself was arrested while trying to smuggle two boys across the Dutch border into Belgium . He was taken to the Vught Concentration Camp and tortured , but did not reveal any information about his colleagues. He was executed on August 11, 1944 . However, his group continued to work and smuggled another 200 Jews into France. Overall, the Westerweel group supported around 300–400 Halutzim and saved the majority of them.

Commemoration

The Westerweel Memorial Forest near Haifa

literature

  • Shaul Sagiv: "In unequal struggle" Christian-Jewish rescue operation of the Westerweel group. From Cologne to Holland through Westerbork via France and Spain to Israel 1924-1947. 2001 ISBN 3-89649-626-3

Web links