Peter Will

Peter Will ( August 21, 1896 in Schoonhoven - died between April 13 and 18, 1945 ) was a member of the Dutch resistance against National Socialism . He was put to death by the Nazi regime.

Life

Peter Will was a meat inspector in the slaughterhouse in the Dutch city of Nijmegen and also a volunteer field guard. He belonged to the Calvinist faith. The family had six sons. Since the occupation of the country by German troops and the beginning of the "labor deployment" of the Dutch in Germany, he has helped objectors to evade forced labor. He took care of "divers" ( onderduikers ), distributed the underground newspaper Trouw , provided assistance to allied airmen who were shot down and was involved in reconnaissance activities. He belonged to the radio group of the resistance fighter Captain C. Hoogerland, who was well known in the Netherlands.

On December 1, 1943, Will was arrested at home at night in Nijmegen and then imprisoned for months in the "Huis van Bewaring" in Arnhem. It is possible that his arrest was in the context of the German Night and Fog Decree introduced in 1941 to suppress resistance to the German occupation , which provided for the secret deportation of Nazi opponents. In May 1944 Will came into the transit camp Amersfoort , was subsequently deported to Germany and needed - research, according to his family - slave labor in Außenkommando Meppen-Versen (Emsland) of the Neuengamme do. When the SS gave up the Neuengamme camp in April 1945, Will was part of a large group of sick and weakened prisoners who, in view of the advance of Allied forces, were sent by the German guards to Bergen-Belsen on a train across northern Germany to keep them available to have. The train did not reach its destination in front of the advancing front. A total of more than 800 prisoners died on this death march-like train ride. Peter Will was one of the 300 dead who were buried in a mass grave on the railway line in Brillit on April 18. In 1954 they were reburied in individual graves.

Will's eldest son Bert, who had also been in the resistance and had to go into hiding, and his son Peter researched the father's history of persecution. They found that Peter Will must have died between April 13 and April 18, 1945. In 1961 the family received a questionnaire to identify the father. Based on the information on some physical characteristics, experts were able to make the assignment. After their exhumation on September 27, 1966, Peter Will's bones were buried in a Dutch cemetery of honor.

In 1944, a few months after his arrest and immediately before his deportation to a concentration camp in Germany, Peter Will wrote an unsent farewell letter to his wife and sons that has survived. A number of belongings of former inmates of the Neuengamme concentration camp were found by British soldiers near Husum after the end of the war , but were classified under false names, including those of Will. The find was handed over to the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen in 1963 . By chance, Will's property (letter, wallet and photos) was assigned to him and so handed over to his family. Will's letter is dated September 17, 1944. On that day, the first members of the US armed forces could be seen in his hometown.

The story never ends for the family, they “always stay in their thoughts”, explained son Joop Will when handing over the relics of the resistance fighter in Bad Arolsen. Peter Will jun. reported that the family had received his father's wedding ring, a fountain pen and a Bible from the Nijmegen municipal office in 1949. Therefore, they would never have suspected that other personal items could have been preserved.

Wills Vita reception

Shortly after the end of the war, a memorial stone was placed at Will's former workplace, the Nijmegen slaughterhouse, commemorating him as a person who "gave his life for our freedom". For his assistance to Allied aviators, he received posthumous charter from General Dwight Eisenhower, then Commander in Chief of the US Forces in Europe, and from the Commander of the British Forces. Will is buried on the Dutch National Field of Honor, which opened in 1949, in Loenen near Apeldoorn.

The two well-known Dutch journalists Pauline Broekema and George Marlet discussed Will's resistance and its history of persecution in Dutch publications in 2009, while their sons Bert and Peter published a book in 2009. The hometown of Nijmegen commemorates him with a biographical description on their page in honor of their war dead under the heading "Resistance in illegality".

literature

• Bert Will / Peter Will, Peter Will 21-8-1896 - ?? - 4-1945. Een levensverhaal , Nijmegen / Veenendaal 2009, ISBN 978-90-90-23827-2 (Review: Henk Termeer, Leven van verzetsman uit Hees beschreven, in: de stenenbank, 17th year, June 2009)
• George Marlet, Een held die zijn verzetswerk brancheg, in: De Verdieping. Trouw, May 4, 2009 [2]
• Pauline Broekema, Zoon van verzetsheld krijgt na 71 jaar alsnog afscheidsbrief, [3]

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Nijmegen war dead .
2. ↑ ^{a b} Freke Remmers, letter van verzetsman komt 71 jaar later pas aan bij familie, AD.nl, 12 November 2015.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Back then: After 72 years, sons receive their father's farewell letter , accessed on November 20, 2015.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Mitteldeutsche Zeitung : Family receives farewell letter after 70 years , November 12, 2015.
5. ^ George Marlet, Een held die zijn verzetswerk brancheg, in: De Verdieping. Trouw, May 4, 2009 [1] .
6. ↑ Archive ( Memento of the original from November 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 

Web links

• International Tracing Service , press release of November 12, 2015
• Oorlogs Graven Stichting , entry on Peter Will, 1896–1945
• Freke Remmers, letter van verzetsman komt 71 jaar later pas aan bij familie, AD.nl, 12 November 2015