Hendrik Koot

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Hendrik Koot, 1940

Hendrik Evert Koot (born April 5, 1898 in Amsterdam , † February 14, 1941 ibid) was a Dutch collaborator with the German occupiers in World War II . He was a member of the WA , the paramilitary association of the NSB . After his violent death, German reprisals took place in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam, which in turn triggered the February strike a few days later .

Biographical information

Hendrik Koot grew up in Amsterdam. In 1935 he joined the National Socialist Movement (NSB) together with his wife Elisabeth van Groningen . The couple had eight children, the two eldest went to sea. The eldest son fought on the side of the Allies, the second eldest came back only after the war. All the others became members of fascist or National Socialist organizations: two sons went to the SS , one to the Dutch Landsturm , one to the NJS , which was based on the model of the Hitler Youth . Hendrik Koot worked for some time in the company of the Jewish diamond dealer Abraham Asscher . After his death, his widow married another WA man. By 1941, Koot reached the rank of Opperwachtmeester , the highest rank as a non-commissioned officer.

Koot's death and the aftermath

Funeral of Hendrik Koot in Zorgvlied, February 17, 1941

Anti-Jewish measures came into force immediately after the German occupation of the Netherlands. Hanns Albin Rauter , SS and Police Leader in the Netherlands, assembled thugs who used violence against Jews in order to provoke public resistance to state violence. On the other hand, Hans Böhmcker , Arthur Seyss-Inquart's deputy , had forbidden the WA men to enter quarters inhabited by Jews.

Koot defied this order and entered the area around Waterlooplein in the afternoon of February 11, 1941 with about 40 WA men, including one of his sons , where he was wounded by a Jewish Knokploeg (group of thugs) and died three days later. Rauter wrote a bloodthirsty account about it in the NSB party newspaper Volk en Vaderland and wrote that "a Jew tore open the victim's artery and sucked out the blood", an allusion to the medieval legend of ritual murder . Historian Jacques Presser sees these and similar passages more as an indication of the bestiality of the National Socialists than as a description of the actual facts. According to the police report of February 18, 1941, Koot was wounded on the head by a blow with a heavy object. The resistance newspaper Het Parool published an article about this police report on February 25, 1941. After Koot's death on February 14, the funeral took place on February 17 at the Zorgvlied celebrity cemetery , which was attended by 2000 National Socialists, and Koot's grave was provided with wolf fishing rods. On February 12th, the Judenrat Amsterdam was founded on the orders of Böhmcker . After a patrol of the German order police was wounded in a storm on an ice cream parlor in the Jewish quarter and 425 Jewish men between the ages of 20 and 35 were arrested and deported to Buchenwald and Mauthausen , it came along from February 24 to 27 Support of the communist party for the February strike .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Biography (Dutch) at De Dokwerker
  2. ^ Paul Arnoldussen: De kinderen van WA-man Hendrik Koot February 22, 1994, accessed on March 14, 2019
  3. ^ Jacques Presser: Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry. Wayne State UP. P. 46, accessed on March 14, 2019
  4. ↑ City Archives Amsterdam: Oud nieuws 2006 ( Memento of September 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on March 14, 2019

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Koot, Hendrik
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Koot, Hendrik Evert (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch collaborator in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH April 5, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Amsterdam
DATE OF DEATH February 14, 1941
Place of death Amsterdam