Helena Kuipers-Rietberg

Memorial plaque for Helena Kuipers-Rietberg in Gouda

Monument in Winterswijk

Helena Theodora "Heleen" Kuipers-Rietberg (born May 26, 1893 in Winterswijk , † December 27, 1944 in Ravensbrück ) was a Dutch resistance fighter against the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II . “Tante Riek”, her code name, is considered to be a central figure in organized resistance in the Netherlands.

biography

Family and first commitment

Helena Rietberg grew up in Winterswijk as the daughter of a middle-class family that belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church and was very religious; she had four siblings. The father was a mill owner and grain dealer. At school she probably met her future husband Peter Kuipers (1892–1978). After finishing school, Kuipers went to Medan , Sumatra , to work for an Amsterdam company, while Helena Rietberg took up a job in her father's office. In 1919 Kuipers came back to the Netherlands and asked for Helena's hand; the father gave his consent on the condition that Kuipers would not return to Sumatra but would join the company of the father-in-law in Winterswijk. The couple married in 1921 and five children were born between 1922 and 1932. Helena Kuipers-Rietberg took care of the family, but was also involved in various church organizations. In 1932 she was one of the co-founders of the Gereformeerde Vrouwenvereeniging in Nederland von Winterswijk and was a national chairperson until 1937. In doing so, she created a network of contacts that should be helpful to her later. “Helena Kuipers-Rietberg was a vrouw met een zeer sterke persoonlijkheid en een great overtuigingskracht. Ze had een groot doorzettingsvermogen en ze bezat leiderscapaciteiten. "(Eng. =" Helena Kuipers-Rietberg was a woman with a very strong personality and great persuasiveness. She possessed great assertiveness and leadership qualities. ")

In resistance

Due to the proximity of Winterswijk to Germany, Helena Kuipers-Rietberg was soon aware of the effects of National Socialism . For her as a believing woman, Hitler was the " Antichrist " in person and his followers "ungodly Nazis". After the German invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940, she warned of the dangers of a Nazification of the Netherlands and the undermining of Christian values. Kuipers-Rietberg urged young people not to register for the Nederlandse Arbeidsdienst (NAD) and to go into hiding. Her whole family took part in the resistance against the German occupation by organizing ration cards and distributing illegal newspapers. Her husband and twin sons Piet and Helmer helped French and British prisoners of war who had escaped from German camps to return to their homeland.

Kuipers-Rietberg was particularly involved in the search for hiding places for Jewish people and also hid two persecuted people in his own house. This turned out to be particularly difficult in Winterswijk, as the National Socialist movement of the Netherlands Nationaal-Socialistische Bewegungsing (NSB) had many supporters there. From 1943 it became more and more difficult to find hiding places, as the Germans wanted to use many men for forced labor in Germany and wanted to arrest former career officers as prisoners of war, many of whom subsequently went into hiding . Allied pilots who were shot down also had to be hidden. In total, around 400 people who went into hiding were hidden in Winterswijk during the war.

Since November 1942 Helena Kuipers-Rietberg was in contact with the reformed pastor Frits Slomp - alias Frits de Zwerver (dt. = The stray ) - who cycled from congregation to congregation and called for resistance against the National Socialists. Kuiper-Rietberg asked him for help in building a national network of local committees. This gave rise to the largest resistance organization in the Netherlands, the Landelijke Organizatie voor Hulp aan Onderduikers (LO) and the armed Landelijke Knokploegen (LKP) associated with it since August 1943 , which raided offices for distributing food cards, freed prisoners and executed traitors. Most recently, the LO had more than 10,000 employees and kept more than 300,000 people hidden. Helena Kuipers-Rietberg was the only woman who attended the weekly meetings where the measures were coordinated. When it was discussed whether liquidations should be permissible in cases of treason, she was one of the proponents.

In the autumn of 1943, Kuipers-Ruitberg fell ill due to her strenuous and nerve-wracking work. Her family wanted her to stop resisting, but they didn't want to follow her advice. Instead, she took on another task and began paying out the Nationaal Steun Fonds , which had been working with the LO since 1943. This fund, which had been set up by the former naval officer Iman Jacob van den Bosch and the bankers Walraven and Gijs van Hall , provided financial support for the families of people in hiding.

On May 24, 1944, a police officer warned Peter Kuipers of an imminent arrest. After they housed their children safely, the parents ran away. The security service tried in vain to set a trap for them by making them shout at the train stations that one of the children had had a fatal accident. The couple hid with a cigar manufacturer in Bennekom . On August 17, 1944, the courier who was supposed to bring the couple new personal papers was picked up by the Germans, and so Helena Kuipers-Rietberg and her husband were also tracked down; on August 19th they were arrested.

In prison

The couple were housed in adjacent cells in the Koepelgevangenis in Arnhem . To encourage her husband, Helena Kuipers-Rietberg sang psalms out loud . The couple had previously agreed that they should assume sole guilt, assuming that the danger to a woman would be less. The Germans released Peter Kuipers in the hope that he would track down other resistance members, but he immediately went into hiding. Helena Kuipers-Rietberg was taken to the Herzogenbusch concentration camp on August 25, 1944 . After the Dolle Dinsdag the camp was cleared and the inmates were taken to the completely overcrowded Ravensbrück concentration camp .

In Ravensbrück, Helena Kuipers-Rietberg was not assigned to work because of her bad eyesight, but to the guards' wardrobe and the food distribution, so she got to know many inmates within a very short time. With her seemingly unshakable cheerfulness, she was support and consolation for her fellow prisoners and accompanied dying women in their final hours. The Germans considered her a religious fanatic because of her strong beliefs. At the end of October 1944 she became ill herself and died on the night of December 27th to 28th, probably from typhoid or pneumonia . Peter Kuipers survived the war and died in 1978.

Commemoration

After the war, Helena Kuipers-Rietberg was posthumously awarded the Verzetskruis , which her husband Pieter received on May 9, 1946 in the Paleis op de Dam . On May 9, 1954, in front of the town hall in Winterswijk, a memorial to "Aunt Riek" by the former Queen Wilhelmina was unveiled. It shows a woman with a herd symbolically representing the people whose lives she saved. The square where the monument stands is called Mevrouw Kuipers-Rietbergplein .

Web links

Commons : Helena Kuipers-Rietberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Ad van Liempt: Heleen Kuipers-Rietberg. Aunt Riek (1893-1944). Historically Nieuwsblad, 2011, accessed January 4, 2015 (Dutch). 
• Eppo Kuipers: Helena Theodora Kuipers-Rietberg 1893-1944, Verzetsvrouw. Biographical Woordenboek Gelderland, 2002, accessed January 4, 2015 (Dutch). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} H.J.Ph.G. Kaajan: Rietberg, Helena Theodora (1893–1944) . In: Klaas van Berkel (Red.): Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland , Vol. 6, Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis, 's-Gravenhage 2008, ISBN 978-90-5216-163-1 ( online ).
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Wesley Dankers: Helena Kuipers-Rietberg (1893–1944). Go2War2.nl, January 11, 2012, accessed January 4, 2015 (Dutch). 
3. ↑ Mevr. HT Kuipers-Rietberg - Aunt Riek. Oud Winterswijk, accessed January 4, 2015 (Dutch).