Hans Wijnberg

Hans Wijnberg

Hans Wijnberg , also Hans Wynberg , (born November 29, 1922 in Amsterdam , † May 25, 2011 in Midlaren, municipality of Tynaarlo , Netherlands) was a Dutch chemist and professor.

Life

Hans Wijnberg and his twin brother Louis Wijnberg had fled to New York before the Second World War because they wanted to escape the coming calamity as Jews. In the USA he was trained as a parachutist. Under the pseudonym Hugh Wynn ( you win ) he worked for the OSS , the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) .

In 1943 Wijnberg joined the US Army. At the same time, his father, mother and younger brother were captured by the SS and taken to Auschwitz. They did not survive the Holocaust. Wijnberg was recruited by the OSS. During their training, Fred Mayer and Wijnberg became close friends. At the time of the American landing in Normandy on July 6, 1944, Wijnberg and Fred Mayer were stationed in North Africa. The 'bureaucratic swamp' initially prevented the deployment of the OSS agents, whereupon both applied for a transfer to the military reconnaissance service. So Mayer got to the headquarters of the Military Reconnaissance Service in Bari , Italy, from where secret operations in southern Europe and the Alpine region were planned. There was Operation Greenup launched. In addition to Wijnberg and Mayer, the deserted lieutenant of the Wehrmacht, Franz Weber, was also involved. The information researched by Mayer was passed on by messengers to Wijnberg, who, as a radio operator, passed the data on to the US base in Bari from a hiding place near Innsbruck.

Hans Wijnberg left the US Army in 1946 and studied chemistry at Cornell University . In 1949 he obtained a bachelor's degree. In 1952 he became a PhD at the University of Wisconsin doctorate . After postdoctoral research at the University of Minnesota , he became an assistant professor at Grinnell, Iowa and later an associate professor at the University of Tulane . After a visiting professorship (1959 to 1960) at the University of Leiden , he accepted the chair for organic chemistry at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (RuG) in 1960.

Well-known academic students of Hans Wijnberg are the Nobel Prize winners Ben Feringa and Bert Meijer . A portrait of Wijnberg, painted by Carla Rodenberg , has been hanging in the Senate Hall of the RuG's Academiegebouw since 2002 .

After his retirement in 1987, Wijnberg founded Syncom in 1988 together with Richard Kellogg and Wolter ten Hoeve , which produces chemicals and offers chemical-technical services.

One day before his death, Wijnberg was interviewed about Operation Greenup as part of a ZDF documentary.

Honors

• University Medal of RuG (1988)
• Wubbo Ockel Prize for "creative organic-chemical synthesis"
• Medal of Merit of the City of Innsbruck, awarded posthumously in 2011

literature

• Peter Pirker: code name Brooklyn. Jewish agents in enemy territory. Operation Greenup 1945. Tyrolia-Verlag, Innsbruck, 2019, ISBN 978-3-7022-3756-1 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Gerald Schwab, OSS agents in Hitler's heartland: destination Innsbruck, p. 158.
2. ↑ Joachim Röderer: Fred Mayer is dead: The "Inglorious Basterd" who came from Freiburg. In: Badische Zeitung . April 22, 2016. Retrieved August 1, 2017 . 
3. ↑ Remembering Hans Wynberg. In: grinnell.edu. Grinnell College, accessed August 1, 2017 . 
4. ↑ Gerald Schwaab: OSS Agents in Hitler's Heartland: Destination Innsbruck. P. 37.
5. ↑ Portrettengalerij .
6. ↑ Explore, March 29, 2008  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  
7. ↑ Prijswinnaars Wubbo Ockelsprijs ( Memento of the original dated December 3, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) 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. .  
8. ^ Dagblad van het Noorden, May 26, 2011, p. 35.