Walraven van Hall

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Plaque commemorating Walraven van Hall in Gouda

Walraven van Hall (born February 10, 1906 in Amsterdam , † February 12, 1945 in Haarlem ) was a Dutch banker who financed the Dutch resistance during the German occupation of the Netherlands.

He used the name van Tuyl as a pseudonym .

Life

Pre-war period

Walraven "Wally" von Hall was born the third child of ten children to Adriaan Floris van Hall, a banker, and Petronella Johanna Boissevain. Many members of the family were known in the Netherlands as entrepreneurs and bankers.

After finishing school he attended the Maritiim Institute Willem Barentsz on Terschelling and left it in 1925 as a helmsman's apprentice . As such, he worked for Royal Holland Lloyd NV. After he had obtained the diploma as second helmsman, he was honorably discharged from service in 1929, to his great disappointment because of his poor eyesight.

His brother Gijsbert van Hall ( Mayor of Amsterdam 1957-1967), who worked as a banker, lived in New York City . Walraven van Hall moved to New York in 1929 and, with the help of his brother, got a job in a bank on Wall Street . After a year he returned to the Netherlands and ran a branch of Bank H. Oyens & Zn, where his father was director. In March 1940 he became a partner of the bank and securities dealership Mi in Zaandam Veltrup. He married Tilly the Tex. The marriage had three children.

Occupation from 1940

In August 1940 he became president of the department of the Netherlands Union ( Nederlandsche Unie ) in Zaandam. The aim of this movement was to unite the people of the Netherlands. It was banned by the German occupation forces at the end of 1941 . Van Hall reacted with concern to the anti-Jewish measures taken by the occupiers.

Walraven van Hall and his brother went underground . They helped raise money for strikers and seafarers' families. Van Hall kept in touch with the Dutch government in exile and ensured that the lenders had the security of getting their loans back from the Dutch government after the occupation ended. Van Hall could not openly write down the names of the lenders. So he handed out a worthless share to the lenders and noted down the code names of the recipients and the number of shares. The result was an underground bank that gave poor families and Jews in hiding not only money but also food cards and ID cards.

With the approval of the Dutch government-in-exile, van Hall was able to receive 50 million guilders from the Dutch bank ( De Nederlandsche Bank ) by forging banknotes and having them exchanged for real banknotes in banks. Walraven van Hall became head of the National Support Fund. He supported many resistance groups and underground newspapers such as Trouw , Het Parool and Vrij Nederland . Walraven van Hall was nicknamed Olieman (oil man) because he could alleviate the differences of opinion between groups.

The leaders of the resistance groups met every Friday , but on January 27, 1945, the location of the meeting of the German occupying forces was revealed. The leaders of the resistance groups were arrested. Walraven van Hall was shot dead in Haarlem on February 12, 1945 and after the end of the war he was reburied with many other resistance fighters in the Bloemendaal Cemetery of Honor .

Commemoration

  • In 1946 van Hall was posthumously honored with the Verzetskruis .
  • In 1978, Walraven van Hall was named Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Memorial .
  • In 2010 a memorial to him was erected across from the Nederlandsche Bank on Fredriksplein in Amsterdam .
  • In 2018 the film The Banker of the Resistance (Dutch: Bankier van het Verzet ) with Barry Atsma in the lead role of Walraven van Hall was released.

Web links

literature

  • Erik Schaap: Walraven van Hall, premier van het verzet (2006) ISBN 9071123952

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ walravenvanhall.nl (PDF, Dutch)
  2. ↑ House of the Netherlands on uni-muenster.de
  3. ↑ Walraven von Hall on wibn.nl (Dutch)
  4. ↑ Walraven van Hall on yadvashem.org (English)
  5. ↑ Wally van Hall on verzetsmuseum.org (Dutch)
  6. ↑ The Resistance Banker in the Internet Movie Database (English)
personal data
SURNAME Hall, Walraven van
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch banker and resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Amsterdam
DATE OF DEATH February 12, 1945
Place of death Haarlem