Richard Schoemaker
Richard Leonard Arnold Schoemaker (born October 5, 1886 in Roermond ; † May 3, 1942 in Sachsenhausen concentration camp ) was a Dutch architect , saber fencer , university professor and resister against the German occupation during the Second World War .
Richard Schoemaker received his training as a soldier from 1905 at the Koninklijke Militaire Academie in Breda . In 1908 he graduated and started in the same year at the Olympic Games in London in saber fencing , but was eliminated in the second round. He then went to the Dutch East Indies , where he was promoted to captain of the Koninklijk Nederlandsch-Indisch Leger in 1915 . After the end of the First World War , he left the army and became a professor of structural engineering at the Technical Hogeschool in Bandung . He later returned to the Netherlands and became professor of architecture at the Delft University of Technology . He remained a major in the reserve and was involved in the design and construction of barracks for over 20 years . His brother Charles Prosper Wolff Schoemaker was also a renowned architect who lived and worked in Indonesia all his life.
With the beginning of World War II , Schoemaker was called up to serve in the technical and engineering unit of the Dutch army , but was not involved in combat operations. After the Dutch army had been defeated by the German armed forces , he made contact with groups in the underground . Together with his university colleague Jan Mekel , he built up his own small sabotage and espionage group. Later they got in contact with Ordedienst (OD), an underground organization founded by Johan Westerveld .
On May 2, 1941, Schoemaker was arrested by the Germans because of his membership in the OD, imprisoned in Scheveningen prison ( Oranjehotel ) and brought to trial in Amersfoort in March 1942 . Together with 70 other defendants, including the Olympic athletes in dressage , Pierre Versteegh , he was sentenced to death . The prisoners were transported to Sachsenhausen , where they were shot by an execution squad on May 3, 1942 , in groups of twelve. The group is said to have been betrayed by a 19-year-old young man who was killed by escaped members of the OD in August 1941 by knocking him unconscious, putting him in a sack, and throwing him into a pond.
Schoemaker was posthumously awarded the Dutch Verzetskruis .
Web links
- Richard Schoemaker in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Tony Bijkerk: Just a name. (PDF; 20 kB) library.la84.org, January 7, 2011, accessed on August 30, 2014 (English).
- ^ Delftsche Courant: Delft had moorden in alle soorten en maten. (No longer available online.) April 2, 2006, archived from the original on December 2, 2014 ; Retrieved August 30, 2014 (Dutch). 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.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Schoemaker, Richard |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Schoemaker, Richard Leonard Arnold (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Dutch architect, saber fencer, university professor and resistance activist against the German occupation during the Second World War |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 5, 1886 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Roermond |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 3, 1942 |
| Place of death | Sachsenhausen concentration camp |