Engelandvaarders and Refugees:
The passengers and 'crew' of the Zeemanshoop
Europe
was turned upside down in May 1940 when the phoney war ended and
German forces parachuted into the Netherlands and swept through Belgium
and into France. Ordinary people caught up in the events of that month
made decisions which changed the course of their lives for ever.The
most desperate to escape before their countries were overran were the
Jews. The Netherlands had remained neutral during the last war and many German Jews thought it would be a safe haven. Between the Nazis coming to power in Germany in 1933 and 1938 about
twenty five thousand Jews left Germany to seek refuge in the
Netherlands. Chance brought the 46 passengers and crew of the Zeemanshoop
together on the evening of Tuesday the 14 May 1940 after the surrender of the Netherlands was broadcast on Dutch radio. More than half were
Jewish. They escaped with their lives but often left their families as
well as their
homes behind. Some were refugees from Germany or
Austria who had found
safety in the Netherlands only to have to flee again. They also wanted
to play their part in the defeat
of Nazi Germany. They included women, high school students and
older men.
On arrival in Britain the refugees from Germany were treated
as enemy aliens and interned. Otto Neurath had an international reputation but most
were anonymous men and women of importance only to their friends and
families. Anybody researching family members with German nationality who arrived in
England from the continent in 1940 should start by reading the National
Archives guide to Internees in Britain during the Second World War.
Most of the passengers were Dutch but many of them were Jews. Marien de Jonge who left behind a wife and a two week old son and the students who crewed the lifeboat were
not Jews and their only motivation for leaving their homes was to fight
for
their country. The
Dutch called their fellow countrymen who left for England after the
surrender of Dutch forces to fight for the liberation of the
Netherlands Engelandvaarders (England Travellers). But where whole families left together, including women
and the elderly, it seems reasonable to assume that they were
Jewish. They left to save their lives but were also keen to serve their country by joining
the armed services or if too old to fight in some other capacity.
The stories of the passengers and crew are told here, often by members of their
own families who might not have been born had their parents not escaped.But if you have not already done so you should start by reading the story of the voyage of the Zeemanshoop and their rescue by HMS Venomous.And if you can add anything to this account of their lives please e-mail the publisher.
Bill Forster
Holywell House Publishing
Name index for families Where no link is provided no details are known at this time
Wilhelm George Belinfante and his sister Ada Juliette Belinfante
Wim Belinfante was born on the 8 October 1904 at s Gravenhage and
was a 36 year old Councilor at the Department of Justice when he
and his 29 year old sister Ada left Scheveningen aboard the Zeemanshoop.
The family were Jewish and their sister, Dora Nelly Belinfante ('Do'),
was unable to escape. She was sent to
the Dutch holding camp at Westerbork and from there to Theresienstadt
(Terezin) concentration camp in what is now the Czech Republic but
survived.
Wim and Ada Belinfante returned to
the Netherlands when the war ended. He never forgot that he owed his life and that of his sister to the Zeemanshoop. On the 21 January 1946 he wrote to Th de Booy, Secretary of the KNRM (Dutch Lifeboat Association), describing the voyage of the Zeemanshoopand on his death aged 92 at s Gravenhage on the 3 February 1997 he left a
legacy
to pay for a new lifeboat named Zeemanshoop. It was launched in 2000 by his 93 year old sister, 'Do' Belinfante, at Breskens at the mouth of the Scheldt. John Blitz
Blitz was the partner of Ro Cohen, the sister of Anna Velmans. He was
the buyer of textiles in the "Bijenkorf" (Beehive), Amsterdam, Hollands
largest department store. After arrival in the Dutch East Indies in late 1940 he went into business with Jo Velmans, Anna Velmans husband, importing textiles from the USA. He died in a civilian prison
camp during the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies (now
Indonesia).
Jo
Bongaerts and Karel Dahmen grew up together at Roermond in the south
east of the Netherlands near the German border. They became good
friends and were both students at Delft University when Germany invaded
the Netherlands. They escaped to England aboard the Zeemanshoop and briefly served on Dutch merchant ships but their lives then took different paths.
Jo Bongaerts enlisted in the Marine Luchtvaart Dienst
(MLD), the air force of the Royal Netherland Navy,
and trained as a pilot in the Dutch East Indies. On returning to
Britain he was retrained by the RAF as a navigator and served in
Mitchell B25 bombers with 320 Squadron. He was severely injured when
his plane crash landed on the 25 October 1943 returning from a raid on
a German airfield near Brest and was awarded the DFC. He told his son
that “I couldn’t let my friends go to war, alone!”
and after eight months in hospital and rehabilitation he retrained as
second pilot and returned to active service with 320 Squadron.
He took part in many operations in support of land forces as they
advanced through France and into the Netherlands, including the bombing
of the bridges over the River Meuse at his home town of Roermond.
Shortly after the liberation of the Netherlands he returned to Roermond
and married his fiancee Elly Wong, the daughter of the town's much
loved doctor. He ended the war as commander of the Gilzen Rijen airbase between Breda and Tilburg. Lt J.M. Bongaerts DFC, FC, OHK1 was discharged
from the Royal Netherlands Navy Reserve on the 16 August 1947.
He returned to the University of Delft to complete his degree in civil
engineering and joined Shell who posted him to the Dutch East Indies as
a pipeline engineer withBataafse Petroleum Maatschappij. His
job took him to Java, Borneo and Sumatra and he lived with Elly in
Dutch compounds where the local staff helped her look after three
adopted children, two boys and a girl. When conditions became difficult
after Sukarno came to power Shell recalled him to the Netherlands in
1961 and made him General Manager of the Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij
(Netherlands Oil Company), jointly owned by Shell and Esso, just two years
after NAM struck gas in the province of Groningen in the north east
of the Netherlands. He spent the next twelve years developing the fieldsto
supply
natural gas to Holland and Western Europe. This key position made him
an important contributor to the economic developement of the Netherlands. He
was appointed as Director of Shell Netherlands in 1966 and retired in
August 1974 but continued to be called upon as an advisor to major
Dutch companies. He died at his home in Assen on the 26 December 1989. Click on his name above for a more detailed account of the life of a modest war hero who made a major contribution to the postwar prosperity of the Netherlands illustrated with some remarkable wartime photographs of his service with RAF Squadron 320, the Dutch Squadron.
Ro Cohen
Ro was the youngest sister of Anna Velmans and the mother of Dick Speijer. She had divorced her husband and lived with her son and her partner, John Blitz, in the house of her married sister, Aal Drukkker.
She worked in the purchasing department of the Bijenkorf department
store in Amsterdam where her sister Anna was a buyer and department
head. Ro Cohen survived three and a half years of imprisonment by
the Japanese in a camp for women on Java.
After the war she resumed her job in The Hague branch of the Bijenkorf
department store, retired to Amsterdam and died in her early seventies.
Karel Rene Dahmen Karel Dahmen was one of the four students who deserve most of the credit for bringing the Zeemanshoop and its passengers to safety. His
decision to cycle from Delft to Scheveningen after hearing the
broadcast announcement of the surrender of Netherland forces changed
the course of his life. After arrival at Dover aboard HMS Venomous he joined theSS Jupiterunder Captain Dekker as assistant engineer before joining the Royal Netherlands Navy as an Ordinary Seaman (OD) on theHNMS Jacob van Heemskerkwhere he became the RDF Operator.
After
officer training Sub Lt Karel Dahmen was posted to the Dutch Naval
Liason Office at the Admiralty but was released to briefly serve on theHNMS Isaac Sweers. In the Spring of 1943 he was posted to the RNN9th MTB Flotillaat Dover training RDF operators and developing tactics for attacking
German convoys in the Channel. He was then sent to the USA
to train with the US Marines and the SeaBeas to create aDutch Marine Brigadeto regain control of the Dutch East Indies after the defeat of Japan.
Karel Dahmen also describes his marriage and postware career as an oilfield
engineer withStanvac Easternin Sumatra and with theContinental Carbon Companyin
the Netherland and the USA where he has lived since 1967. Karel Dahmen
is 92 and lives in Austin, Texas, but remains active, hiking in the
Colorado Mountains and sculling on the lake in Austin. To read the full
account of his life click on his name above. Mrs Daniels
Morris and Alida Drukker
'Max' and his wife 'Aal', Anna Velmans' oldest sister, lived in
Scheveningen, the seaside resort of The Hague, on the same street as
Jo, Anna and Loet Velmans. Max worked in the wholesale fur trade. After
arrival in Britain they lived in Llandudno where Max had found work as
a diamond polisher, a trade he learned as a young man. They stayed in
London for a year or two after the war before returning to their house
in Scheveningen where they died.
Fischer and wife
Goldschmidt and wife
Anybody
researching family members who arrived in England from the continent in
1940 should start by reading the National Archives guide toInternees in Britain during the Second World War.If you trace a family member who arrived in Britain on the Zeemanshoop please contact the publisher so that their story can be told on this page.
Goldschmidt (2nd) and wife
Hendricus Lucas Joannes Hack
'Harry' Hack was the 'captain' of the crew of four students who took the Zeemanshoop to
sea. He was born at Oud en Nieuw Gastel on the 23 August 1913 and in 1933 did his compulsory military training in the Regiment Genietroepen (engineers) of The Royal Netherlands Army (Koninklijke Landmacht). He was studying mechanical engineering at the University
of Delft when he was called up in October 1938 to serve once again in the third Regiment of Engineers (Genietroepen)
but in December 1939 was released on grounds of ill health and was able to
resume his studies at Delft. The experience he gained while
serving as an apprentice engineer on a voyage to the
Netherlands East
Indiesenabled him to keep the Zeemanshoop's
diesel engine going.
On arrival in England he enlisted in the Royal
Netherlands Naval Air Service, the Marine Luchtvaart Dienst
(MLD), and after service in London and Pembroke was sent in July 1941
to Enys House, the Dutch Naval College near Penryn, Cornwall, for
officer training. For reasons unknown he was posted to the Dutch East
Indies and arrived at Morokrembangan, the naval air station at
Surabaya, on the 9 February, a week after it was badly damaged in the
first bombing raid by Japanese aircraft. He left the Dutch East Indies
aboard the SS Kota Baroe on
the 2 March, less than a month after his arrival and a few days before
the surrender of Dutch forces, and arrived at Colombo, Ceylon, on the 9
March. He returned to England via Cape Town aboard the Java Class
cruiser Hr MS Sumatra on the 24 October 1942.
His service record gives no details of postings between his return to
England in October 1942 and being appointed as a maintenance engineer
in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve (RAFVR) in October 1943. He
was part of the (Dutch) Service Echelon 6320 until the 15 June 1944
when he was posted to 320 Squadron (London) until 1 September
1945. He may have continued to be dogged by ill health as his
next posting was to the headquarters of Naval Air Forces at
Scheveningen, the small harbour from which he set out on the Zeemanshoop in May 1940, and he remained there until the 15 June 1946. He was demobilised on the 2 June 1947.
He married Johanna
Alegonda Dimphna Van Meel and they had three children. His subsequent
history is not known but he died on the 1 December 1984 in 's
Hertogenbosch.
This account of the life of
Harry Hack is almost entirely based on his service record which was
provided by the Netherlands Institute for Military History (NIMH).
Marinus Willem Cornelis de Jonge
Marien de Jonge was born at Weert, a small town in the south east of
the Netherlands, on the 25 September 1911, the oldest son of Jhr Ir.
Johan Maurits de Jonge and Jkvr. Pauline Clasina Berg. The family were
Jonkheer (Jhr.), minor aristocrats, with a long and distinguished
history, and his father was an
engineer working on the construction of a railway bridge at Weert.
The family
moved to Sumatra in the Dutch East Indies when his father accepted a
post with the Java Timber Company and a few years later to Semarang on
Java where Marien began his education. He was fourteen and had two sisters
and a younger brother when his father was appointed director of the
Combined Javanese Timber Companies in Amsterdam in 1925 and the family
returned to the Netherlands.
Marien was fourteen when he started his secondary education at the Gymnasium in Baarn, a small town east of Amsterdam, but his brother began at the normal age of twelve. Ernst de Jonge was a bright student, hard working and
focussed but also a rebel by nature. Not only was he expelled from
school several times but he was constantly in trouble during his compulsory military training.
His older more responsible brother was already twenty when he left school and went to Leiden
University to study municipal law and was joined after his year's military training
by his gifted younger brother. Despite a
three years age difference and Ernst representing the Netherlands in
rowing at the Berlin Olympics in 1936 he quickly caught up with Marien and the
two brothers graduated within three months of each other in 1938.
Marien initially worked as the secretary for a small town
near The Hague but later joined the Foundation for Special Needs (Nationaal Fonds voor Bijzondere Noden)
while his talented younger brother joined Bataafsche Petroleum
Maatschappij (BPM), part of Royal Dutch Shell, at first in London and
then in Curacao. The two brothers were very close but their lives were already following different paths.
Marien married Cornelia Adriana ter Horst on the 3
November 1938 and his first child, Johan Maurits
was born on the 27 April 1940, two weeks before German forces invaded the Netherlands.
Despite his total lack of military experience he decided after talking
it over with his wife that it was his duty to leave for England to
continue the fight against the enemy. On the evening of the 14
May he cycled to the harbour at Scheveningen to try and get away on a
fishing boat. On arrival he met a sergeant in the army who told him
that Dutch forces were still fighting in Zeeland to protect the
entrance to the Scheldt in the hope that British army units would come
to their assistance and they decided to try and join them.
The four students who commandeered the Zeemanshoop
were intent on going to England to continue the fight and the majority
of the passengers who rushed aboard were Jewish and many of them had
already fled from Germany and knew only too well what to expect if they
remained in the Netherlands under German occupation. Marien de Jonge
and the Dutch army sergeant who fired warning shots over the heads of
the men and women trying to force their way aboard were almost alone in
wanting to join the Dutch forces fighting on in Zeeland.
Loet Velmans and Karel
Dahmen recalled that when the engine of the Zeemanshoop
stopped briefly
while still in sight of the Dutch coast Marien de Jonge argued
loudly that they should turn back, saying that he had sailed on a yacht
on the North Sea, there were violent storms and it could be very
dangerous. The sea was calm but the lifeboat was overcrowded and and likely to founder if the weather changed and there were also problems with the cooling system and they were running low on fuel. De Jonge used these arguments to try and persuade the others to head for Zeeland but his
aristocratic manner and accent was resented by some of the passengers and did not help his case. The dispute was resolved when Harry Hack said that if anybody had changed their mind about going to
England and wanted to
return they could swim. After landing at Dover Marien went to London and contacted Jhr. Ir. O. C. A. van Lidth de Jeude,
a family friend from his home town of Baarn, who had been appointed by
the Dutch Government in Exile as High Commissioner for Relief work (Regeerings Commissaris) and after registering for military service worked as his secretary while awaiting his callup papers.
Young Dutch nationals, some born in Britain and no longer able to speak Dutch, and Engelandvaarders like Marien de Jonge, were called up for service in the Nederlands Legioen
and were trained by the British army. In April 1941 he was sent to the
OCTU (Officers Cadet Training Unit) No. 103, Royal Armoured Cars, at
Perham Down on Salisbury Plain.
The Nederlands Legioen was renamed thePrincess Irene Brigade on 11 January 1941 and in October Marien was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Wapen der Cavalerie. The brigade was named after the grand
daughter of Queen Wilhelmina who had left the Netherlands with her mother, Princess Juliana, aboard HMS Codrington and was now in Canada.
On the 10th of May 1941, the first anniversary of the German invasion
of the Netherlands, Queen Wilhelmina attended a ceremony at the bombed
ruins of the Dutch protestant church in London, and:
"My father took a day's leave from Perham Down to attend the
ceremony and was photographed with Dutch school children in their
national costumes. The photograph was published in that evening's
paper and my father was shown it by the landlord of the pub where he
and his friends stopped for a drink while driving back to Perham Down.
It was also published in the American press, where a distant family
member recognised my fathers face, and in the Dutch East Indies, where
several friends of my grandparents recognised him and wrote to them in
Holland (which was apparently still possible at that time). It became a
very íllustrious picture!"
Jan Maurits de Jonge
On the 31 August 1941 Ernst de Jonge arrived in London having used his
influence with Prince Bernhard, the German born husband of Princess Juliana, to secure his release from BPM in
Curacao and immediately volunteered to train as an agent of the Dutch
Central Intelligence Service (CID) which was re-organised under the
leadership of Col. de Bruijne. The two brothers met for the last time a
few days before Ernst de Jonge and his radio operator were dropped off
on the Dutch coast in the early hours of the 24 February 1942 by a
Royal Navy MGB.
In March Marien left Britain for Ceylon to play his part in the war
against Japan which had occupied the Dutch East Indies, captured
Singapore and Malaya and was threatening British India. In Ceylon he
trained as a parachutist and commando with the Korps Insulinde (initially
called Netherland's Special Operations) to collect intelligence and
organise guerrilla activities on Sumatra where he had lived as a boy.
The Korps Insulinde carried out some seventeen landings on the coast of
Sumatra in 1943-4. Marien's role had some parallels with that of his
brother's more clandestine activities in the Netherlands.
But by then Ernst de Jonge had been captured, a victim of the infamous
"Englandspiel" (the England Game) whereby the German counter intelligence service 'turned'
radio operators without the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) detecting it.
Ernst was captured on his twenty eighth birthday, the 22 May 1942.
In 1944 Marien got permission to return to England to organise an
attempt to rescue his brother from a prison in Haaren. Fortunately,
consent to attempt the rescue by parachuting in with two volunteers was
refused as it was highly probable that Ernst had already been
transferred to Rawich near Breslau in Silesia where he was shot. His
life is well documented in an article by Tony Bijkerk in the Journal of Olympic History published by the International Society of Olympic Historians.
When Japan surrendered in August 1945 Marien
de Jonge remained in the East Indies to help restore order. He returned to
the Netherlands in March 1946 and saw his wife and son for the first
time since May 1940. She had survived the war in relative safety.
Within a few days of him leaving for England his wife's parents came by
car to take her to Rijssen, where they lived and were she was born, and
took her into their house. Jan Maurits described how "they rented a
little own house for her where she could live with her child (me) until
the end of the war. And they provided her with an income, although my
mother also picked up small jobs to earn some money herself."
When the Dutch tried to return to what had been the "Dutch East Indies"
they found that the Indonesians were prepared to fight for their
independence. Marien had
intended to return to civilian life after the war but the death of his
brother and his sense of duty persuaded him to stay on as a volunteer.
He was given command of an armoured car unit of 185 men, part of the Regiment Huzaren van Boreel. He returned to the East Indies in January 1947 and his wife and two sons followed in October. His unit took part in Politionele acties ('police
actions') in 1947-9 but although the Dutch could control the towns and
cities they could not gain control of the the countryside. The
Netherlands lost the support of the United States and a conference at
The Hague agreed to the transfer of power to an independent Indonesia
on the 27 December 1949. Marien de Jonge wrote an account of his time
commanding the 4th Squadron of Armoured Cars in the Dutch East Indies
during the uprising which was published in 2008 by his son, Jan Mauritz
de Jonge, as "Mijn Ruiters" (My Riders).
He returned to the Netherlands in 1950, decided to become a professional soldier and went to the Hogere Krijgsschool in The Hague for two years. A distant cousin had been
adjutant to Queen Wilhelmina (and accompanied her to London when she
left the Netherlands on HMS Hereward on the 13 May 1940) and now
Marien became adjutant to her daughter, Queen Juliana. Later in
his career he became the military attaché at the Dutch Embassy in
Brussels. He retired with the rank of Colonel.
He was awarded the Bronzen Leeuw (Bronze Lion) and the Ridder in de orde van Oranje Nassau met de Zwaarden (Knight in the order of Orange-Nassau for courage in action).
He had been married for 33 years and had five children by the time his
wife died in Amsterdam on the 19 July 1971. He married his second wife,
Elisabeth Clara Schuller tot Peursum on the 31 October 1972 and they
were happily married for a further 33 years before she died in 2005.
Marien de Jonge always wanted to be the Mayor of a small town or serve
in the army and throughout his long life has always "Put his Queen
first, his country second and his family third".
Marien de Jonge is in good health and celebrated his hundredth birthday on the 25 September 2011
Acknowledgements
This
account of Marien de Jonge's life could not have been written
without the assistance of his oldest son, Jan Maurits de Jonge. I would
also like to acknowledge the help of Wout Smit who traced Marien de
Jonge, put me in touch with Jan Maurits de Jonge and sent me the web
address of the article about Ernst de Jonge. I would also like to thank
Leo van de Pas and his family history database
for supplying precise names and dates for members of the de Jonge
family. The first two photographs are from the family album of Marien
de Jonge but the last one is from his entry in the Dutch Wikipedia.
Jozef Jacob van der Laan
Lis Drew, the grand daughter of Jozef Jacob van der Laan, wrote this outline of his life:
"Jozef Jacob (Joop) van der Laan (my maternal grandfather) was born at
Assen in the Netherlands on the 11 July 1886. Assen was a small town in
the north east of the country a few miles south of Groningen and not
far from the German border. His father, Marcus van der Laan,
and his father before him were both butchers. Joop's parents were
Jewish. He was the sixth child in a family of nine and there were also four half brothers
and sisters from his father's first marriage.
Joop chose journalism as his career and after completing his high
school exams began work on 15 May 1905, initially as a volunteer, at his local newspaper, the Asser Courant.
He was an adventurous young man and after a few years at the newspaper
he left to travel the world, including a sea
voyage to New York as an apprentice cook. He kept a diary of his
travels and used this as the basis for a number of newspaper articles.
When he returned to the Netherlands he resumed work at the Asser Courant but in 1911 travelled to Medan on the island of Sumatra in the Dutch East Indies (modern day Indonesia) to take up
a position as Editor in Chief with the Deli Courant,
a position he held
for over twenty years. Joop met his future wife Maria Lydia Frey in
1917 while returning to Sumatra from leave on the SS Nikon Maru,
and they married in Tokyo,
Japan. The seaboard romance and marriage of the young Dutch journalist
and his Swiss bride was reported in gushing terms by an English
language paper in Tokyo. His wife was born in Chile and, significantly
for their future life together, was not Jewish.
Both their
daughters were born in Sumatra: my mother Elizabeth Amalia on 27
January 1919 and my aunt Flora Marie-Louise on 24 August 1922. Joop van der Laan
celebrated his silver jubilee as a journalist in Medan, Sumatra in
1930. In a speech to honour his work as Editor-in-Chief, Mr van den
Bergh (the first Editor) highlighted the growth of the Deli Courant,
under Joop’s leadership, from “a more or less unsightly small newspaper
to a vigorous paper...that has the largest circulation in the Outer
Regions, with a circle of readers that has increased nine to ten times
in size.” Joop returned to the Netherlands with his family in October 1930 but went back three years later to
give advice and leadership to the newspaper which had been doing badly since
his departure. From 1936 Joop lived in the Netherlands with his wife, Lydia, and two
daughters but continued his work as a journalist and warned
unceasingly of the danger from Nazi Germany. He campaigned for the Eenheid door Democratie
(Unity through Democracy) party which rejected both communism and
fascism and in his speeches described what was happening in Germany."
As a Jew and an outspoken critic of Germany he was worried about
his safety
under German occupation and on the day the government ordered the surrender of Dutch forces he decided to try to leave
Holland. His wife and two daughters would be safer without him. He
left their home in The Hague on his bicycle, overcoat over his arm, to cycle to the
harbour at Scheveningen where he boarded the Dutch lifeboat,
Zeemanshoop. He gave this brief description of the voyage in an article he
wrote in 1980 for Schakel, the
magazine of the Stichting Genootschap Engelandvaarders (Society of Engelandvaarders):
“It started on May 14 1940, the day the Netherlands had to surrender its
defence to Hitler’s Germany and to find new ways to support ‘England’s
Resistance’. About thirty Dutchmen [in fact, forty six] left their homes and looked for a
way out in the direction of Scheveningen. Lying there were many craft
whose owners did not want to relinquish them. There was also the Zeemanshoop belonging to the North-South Holland Lifeboat Society, a
vessel which had already saved may lives at sea.
Some, willing to try anything, broke the Zeemanshoop off its chain.
It was anything but easy to start but four persistent students managed
to activate one of the two engines and so the ship left port. It was
only at daybreak that the numbers on board became apparent. Towards the
afternoon we were spotted by an English warship which took us on board
and delivered us safely to an English port. Much later these people
(the refugees on board the Zeemanshoop) were recognised as true
Engelandvaarders."
His daughter, Malie Wynberg-van der Laan, described what happened next in an e-mail from her home in Australia:
"Long
before the war my parents decided that my father should leave
immediately if Germany occupied the Netherlands. He had spoken
regularly at meetings warning about the dangers of a Nazi invasion and
we
found out later that he was No 70 on a list of those to be imprisoned.
A few days after he left a good friend of ours came to fetch my mother
as somebody wanted to talk to her. It was a young communist who had
boarded the Zeemanshoop with my father and the others
but decided to give up his place to someone in greater need. He brought
back my father’s bicycle, and we now knew that my father had been
able to get away. A couple of days later my school headmaster came to
tell us that he had heard my father speak on the Free Dutch Radio from
London and we knew that he was alive."
Jozef Jacob van der Laan (left) and the editorial board of Vrij Nederland Van der Lann is fifth from the left in this photograph from the Dutch National Archives
In London Joop van der Laan worked for the Netherlands National News
Agency (ANP), spoke regularly on Free Dutch Radio, wrote articles for the London based weekly newspaper Vrij Nederland
(Free Netherlands) - not to be confused with the first and best known of the underground
newspapers in occupied Holland which had the same name.
He travelled all over England giving lectures on the invasion and
occupation of the Netherlands and he also joined the Home Guard.
Joop described in Schakel how his family fared after he left:
"The author of this article left his wife and two daughters in the care
of friends in the Netherlands. His wife was of Swiss parentage, born in
Chile, and had access to three different passports but this
notwithstanding, she did not get an Ausweiss (exit permit) to return to
the country of her birth. However she kept persevering and, with the
assistance of Chilean representatives in the Netherlands, finally
received a permit from the Germans to return, with her two daughters,
to the country where she was born.”
Marlie Wynberg described their adventures and how they were able to join their father in London:
"No
one was allowed to leave Holland but as my Swiss mother was born
in Santiago, Chile, we were able to obtain Chilean passports to travel
to Chile. I still have mine. At the end of January 1941 we left
Holland by train. After a short stay in Bilbao we managed to get to the
Spanish-Portuguese border where we met my father who had come from
London to see us.
On the 13 February 1942 we boarded the Cabo de Hornos from Lisbon for Buenos Aires where my mother’s sister lived. In April 1943 my sister and I boarded the Port Victor
at Buenos Aires as volunteers for the UK. On the evening of the 30
April the ship was hit by four torpedoes 400 miles south of Ireland. Captain Higgs and the passengers and crew got away in five lifeboats and three sliding rafts. We
were so lucky that the message sent by the telegraphist, who went
down with ship, was received. Ten crew members, two gunners and five
passengers died. A Lancaster found us and dropped food parcels. Twenty
hours later we were taken aboard HMS Wren
which picked up 149 survivors and landed us at London. After four days
in a reception centre where they checked up on us we met up with my
father. My mother came later, by chance sailing with the same Captain
Higgs."
Left: Joop van der Laan and his two daughters, Marie Louise (left) and Elizabeth (right), London 1943
Right: Ted Wynberg and Elizabet Wynberg van der Laan, London 1944
Malie and her sister Elizabeth volunteered for the (Dutch) Women’s Help
Corps. Elizabeth Amalia, a nurse, also worked at St Thomas’
Hospital. Joop’s wife joined the family later and they lived
together in London.
World War II had a devastating impact on Joop and his family. Over twenty
of his brothers and sisters, their spouses and children were
incarcerated in concentration camps; only one nephew survived. In
addition, a very large number of his extended family was also killed.
Joop’s escape on the Zeemanshoop saved his life.
In 1946 Joop and his wife left England to return to the
Netherlands but in May 1947 they travelled to Australia where Joop took
up
a position as a press officer at the Dutch Embassy in Melbourne. In 1951
he was appointed as an officer for Press and Cultural affairs with the Dutch Consular Service in Sydney.
Many people in postwar Europe were keen to create a new life for
themselves in Australia and Joop was invited to write a book about the
country in which he had settled which was published in 1950.
In October 1951 they returned to
the Netherlands and Joop became the Managing Director of the Dutch
publishing house Koch & Knuttel in Gouda. The
success of his book on Australia encouraged him to write a book a book
about Canada. In July 1952 he travelled to Argentina where his wife's
sister lived and from there to the USA and
Canada. They returned in mid November and his book on Canada was
published in 1954. He retired in
about 1964. In addition to his books on Australia and Canada he had co-authored with Johannes Marinus a book on
economic conditions in Deli, Sumatra, which was published in 1929. Joop van der Laan was also a
recipient of the Order of Oranje-Nassau.
Left:
Joop van der Laan with his daughter, Elizabeth, and his grand children
John (in his mother's arms), Theodore (Ted) and Lis, Botanic Garden
Sydney, August 1951
Right: Joop van der Laan and his wife moved to a Masonic
retirement home at Bilthoven in May 1967 and he died on 11
December 1981
Malie Wynberg described how she met her husband:
"I
met my husband in London in 1944. He had also escaped from Holland
in August 1943 with a friend using false papers via Belgium, France the
Pyrenees on foot to Spain, two prisons and than Madrid. With a group of
hockey players thery finally cane to London via Gibraltar on the Dempo, a 17,000 ton Rotterdam Lloyd liner which had been converted into a troop carrier.To this day I am so grateful to the four students who stole the Zeemanshoop and saved so many people's lives."
Lis Drew explains how the family came to live in Australia:
"Both my parents were born in Indonesia to Dutch parents. My mother’s
family lived in Sumatra, my father’s family in Java. My father, with a
couple of friends, escaped from occupied Holland in August 1943 via
Belgium, France and Spain. My parents met in London and were married in
1944. I was born in England (1945) and went with my parents to Holland
in 1946. We emigrated to Australia in 1951."
Lis Drew,
Brisbane, Australia June 2011
Herman Marx
Herman Marx was the nephew of Leo Polak and left with him, his wife and their on the Zeemanshoop.Nothing further is known about him at present.
Described by Harry Hack in his memoir of the voyage as a "Koopman in London", a merchant.
Meuleman and wife
Lourens Marinus Meijers
Lou Meijers (nickname 'Loekie' - 'Lucky Lou'?)
was born on the 27 January 1920 at Groningen in the north of the Netherlands near the German border. His father, Pieter Gillis Meijers, was an agricultural engineer at a proefboerderij (an agricultural research station) and his mother, Jannetje Tollenaar, taught agriculture at the high school in Groningen.
Lou Meijers was a first year medical student at Groningen University in May 1940 when the invasion took place.
On the 14 May he told his parents he was leaving and cycled off without
any clear plans. It was more than 200 kms to Scheveningen but he left
that evening aboard the Zeemanshoop. His parents were very worried and it was a long time before they heard that he had arrived in England.
Lou and the other three student crew members were befriended by Freddie
Knottenbelt, the secretary of the Netherlands Emergency Committee, and
visited him at his beautiful house at Roehampton in south London. They
were guests of the Provost at Oriel College, Oxford, where
Maarten Knottenbelt was a student for ten days. Karel
Dahmen recalled walking along the
banks of the Isis philosophising about the meaning of life and Lou
Meijers arguing that they were only here to propogate. In the
atmosphere of the time any foreigner was suspected of being a fifth
columnist or saboteur and Lou Meijers was taken to a police station and
locked up until the Provost, Sir David Ross, vouched for him.
After working for two months as a farm labourer in Oxfordshire Lou
Meijers returned to London and got a job as a messroom servant on the SS Prins Maurits,
a small 1,287 gross tons merchant ship, owned by N.V. Maatschappij
Zeetransport of Rotterdam. On Saturday the 7 September 1940 the Prins Maurits
was berthed in the Surrey Commercial Docks during a massive night
bombing raid by 300 aircraft. It was on fire
and largely abandoned by its crew and berthed near a burning warehouse when Meijers and the third engineer
cut the ship loose and floated it into open water saving the ship. He was awarded the Kruis van Verdienste (Cross of Merit) for his initiative and bravery.
By the 1 November 1940 when he was
issued with a National Registration Identity Card he was already serving in the Dutch army but
inspired by the
young men fighting
the Battle of Britain over London he volunteered to train with the
Royal
Air Force. This was only possible after the 16 January 1941 when it was
arranged that
Dutchmen
could fly with the RAF Volunteer Reserve without losing their
nationality. There was an urgent need to train pilots and navigators as
well as build more planes and there was a huge expansion in training
facilities. Lou Meijers spent most of 1941 being processed through this training programme.
L.M.
Meijers (third from left) at No 2 Initial Training Wing of the RAF at Cambridge where he received his basic military training Courtesy of Pieter Meijers
After
basic military training with No 2 Initial Training Wing of the RAF at
Cambridge he began basic flight training on De Havilland Tiger Moths
with No 1 EFTS (Elementary Flight Training School) at Hatfield in May
1941 and
moved onto advanced training in the Miles Master two seat monoplane, a
good preparation for flying Hurricanes and Spitfires. In October after
70 hours flight instruction he received his Wings at No 9 SFTS
(Services Flying Training School) at Hullavington in Wiltshire.
Following advanced training in fighter tactics and a period at 57 OTU
(Officers Training Unit) at Hawarden in North Wales he was posted
to 602 (City of Glasgow) Squadron as Flight Sergeant Meyers in January
1942.
Although on paper part of the Military Air Arm (Militaire Luchtvaart) of the Dutch Army (the Dutch Navy also had an air service, the Marine Luchtvaart Dienst
or MLD) he was flying a Spitfire MkVb with a regular RAF fighter squadron
whose pilots came from all the allied nations, "a regular League of
Nations". 602 Squadron was based at RAF Redhill, Surrey, and commanded
by Squadron Leader B.E. "Paddy" Finucane DSO, DFC and Bar, a 21 year
old ace fighter pilot credited with 26 kills:
In
January 1942, Finucane was given command of No. 602 Squadron RAF at RAF
Redhill. On 20 February 1942, Finucane was slightly wounded in the leg
during a strafing mission with his new command. Four Focke Wulf Fw 190s
fell to his guns in March 1942. Finucane's fame spread beyond RAF ranks
and "model airplanes of his Spitfire with the vivid green Shamrocks
were sold all along Piccadilly Circus and The Strand." He became the
youngest Wing Commander in the RAF on 27 June 1942, leading the
Hornchurch Wing. Wikipedia
Flight Seargeant Meyers joined
Squadron 602 in the same month as Finucane and had to learn quickly to
survive. On his second flight he became separated from his squadron at
7,000 ft over Boulogne and returning home across the Channel he spotted
four groups of three aircraft flying in formation and thinking they
were his squadron headed towards them but when he got closer he saw the
black crosses instead of RAF roundels and, too late, recognised them as
Focke Wulff 190s. He fired both 20mm cannons and all four machine guns
and headed home as fast as he could without knowing whether he had hit
them. 'Lucky Lou' Meyers!
In June 1942 after five months combat experience (and two weeks
before
Wing Commander Finucane was killed) he was one of three Dutch pilots
posted as instructors to No 55 Operational Training Unit at RAF Annan
in Dumfrieshire, twenty miles north west of Carlisle.
Having gone through the complete RAF training programme himself he knew
the operational skills newly qualified pilots needed if they were to
survive long enough to become skilled fighter pilots. From December
1942 to January 1943 he was himself being trained, at the Central
Gunnery School in Sutton Bridge, near the Wash in Lincolnshire.
Central Gunnery School at Sutton Bridge, Lincolnshire, 1943 Flight Seargeant Meyers (the RAF anglicised his name) is is in the rear row on the left
The course members included Wing Commander Daniel le Roy du Vivier Courtesy of Pieter Meijers
On the 12 June 1943 Flight Lieutenant L.M. Meyers was posted to 322 Squadron whose pilots were mainly Dutch, initially at RAF Woodvale, Formby, near Southport.
Lucky Lou Meyers' logbook Courtesy of Pieter Meijers
He was based at West Malling in Kent
intercepting the V1 flying bombs and trying to bring them down by "wing
tipping" before they reached London. Flight Officer L.M. Meyers served with 322 Squadron until the 29 April 1945 and was credited with bringing down one V1 and awarded the Vliegerskruis (Flying Cross). When he enlisted he had agreed to serve until 1948 and he was a reserve Captain in the Military Luchtvaart after leaving.
Flight Officer L.M. Meyers, third from right, with fellow officers of RAF Squadron 322, the Dutch Spitfire Squadron Courtesy of Pieter Meijers
F/Lt L.M. Meyers described the voyage of the Zeemanshoop in a letter he wrote to Th de Booy, Secretary of the KNRM (Dutch Lifeboat Association) on the 11 Jan 1946 and de Booy based his account of the voyage in Tusschen Mijnen en Grondzeeën (G.A. van Oeerschoot, 1947) on this letter and a letter from Wim Bellinfante. Lou Meijers wrote in his personal copy "don't throw this book away, it means a great deal to me".
He restarted his medical
training at Groningen and qualified as a doctor in 1953. Since it would
have been too expensive to start his own medical practice he joined the
PTT, the Dutch Post and Telephone company, as a bedrijfsarts (company doctor). He
lived in Zwolle and The Hague where he met his wife, Petra Selma Cohen.
She was Jewish and lost many of her family in the Holocaust. They
married in 1958 and had two sons, Pieter and Jan. The war was not
talked about much in the family but he mentioned his escape and on
cycle tours with his sons at weekends often visited Scheveningen where
he had left the Netherlands aboard the Zeemanshoop on the 14 May 1940. He died at The Hague on the 31 July 2002.
******
Pieter
Meijers, still lives in his parents house, but has donated most
of his father's papers (including his pilot's logbook) and wartime
photographs to the Netherlands Institute of Military History (NIMH) and
these were invaluable in writing this account of F/Lt L.M. Meyers
service in the RAF.
In
January 1945 he was interviewed for a propaganda broadcast by Radio
Oranje which was recorded on vinyl and transcribed. This vivid first hand
account, soon to be made available as a digital audio file, helps bring
the bare facts alive. Dutch readers will enjoy the article about Lou
Meijers wartime service published by the Koninklijke Luchtmacht (KLu)
in its journal De Vliegende Hollander 2011 67(5) May, 200-2.
Another useful source is the book by W.J.E. Kock published by KLu in
1968 on the 25th anniversary of the founding of 322 Squadron.
This
account of Lou Meijers life would not have been possible without the
assistance of Dr Erwin van Loom of the NIMH and Pieter Meijers.
Between the Nazis coming to power in Germany in 1933 and
1938 about twenty five thousand Jews left Germany to seek refuge in the
Netherlands. One of the Jewish refugees was Frieda Gurtz who
moved to Enschede where she met Kurt Munzer in his leather
goods shop. Kurt was also a Jewish refugee from Germany. Frieda Gurtz
explained that "I was nineteen and Kurt and I fell in love at onceand
in 1939 we were married in the synagogue." The young couple moved to The
Hague and in 1940 when the Netherlands was invaded they decided to get
out as quickly as possible, "I was pregnant and did not want to live
under the Nazis and on the 14 May we tried to get away by sea. We went
to the beach at Scheveningen. Most of the fishing boats were full of
people who had paid a lot of money. We jumped into a lifeboat, the Zeemanshoop.
Four students were in charge and wanted to take us to England. We had
no time to let our families know we were leaving." Freda and Kurt
Munzer landed at Dover and started a new life in England.Key their names above
for a more detailed account of their lives in Germany, as refugees in
the Netherlands, as internees on the Isle of Man and, finally building
a new life in Leicester, England.
Otto Neurath and and Marie Reidemeister
Otto Neurath and Marie Reidemeister had arrived in The Hague
from Vienna after the Austrian fascists took over the city in 1934. In
Vienna they had pioneered the use of symbols and icons to communicate
statistical and factual information in exhibitions and for adult
education. In the Netherlands they had established the International
Foundation for Visual Education and renamed their Vienna method Isotype
(International System of TYpographical Picture Education). When the
invasion of Holland began in May 1940, they hid in their apartment,
depending on Dutch friends to deliver food. When Dutch surrender seemed
likely they had escaped to the harbour at Scheveningen.
A
characteristic portrait of Otto Neurath (left) and the New Years
greeting card of the International Foundation for Visual Education, 1940 Courtesy of the Otto & Marie Neurath Isotype Collection, University of Reading
At first, all they could see were the fishing boats and fishermen
standing around, smoking pipes. There were soldiers on the beach. An
oil depot was on fire and the air was black with smoke. British and
Dutch troops had been destroying fuel reserves along the coast to
prevent the Germans using them. Otto said, “If we don’t find a boat I’m
going on a piece of wood”
But they found the Zeemanshoop.
In charge of the boat was a student called Harry Hack, “a fine name”,
remarked Otto, “for such an adventure”. More than forty people had
already gathered on board when they arrived. Otto joked that when they
jumped from the high dock, they jumped “head over heels”. Marie said
that his weight nearly sank the little boat. They thought they were the last to join
the already overloaded boat. A Dutch soldier shot his gun into the air
to prevent any more refugees from boarding. By the time they set off it
was evening.
Marie later wrote about the journey on the Zeemanshoop
“For us this was a great adventure indeed. We were immersed in the
stories of the Huguenots and their flights in fog and night over the
frontiers and the sea - so there we are, we know how it feels”. She and
Otto were glad to be alive and “extremely happy” to have found the
“tiny nutshell of a boat”. Neurath described their rescue by HMS
Venomous, and how they were given “bananas, tea and kindness”.
On arrival in Britain both Otto and Marie were classified as "Enemy
Aliens". On the 11th May, in response to German campaigns in Europe,
the British military had persuaded the Home Secretary Sir John
Anderson, “that every male enemy alien between sixteen and seventy
should be removed forthwith from the coastal strip.” This strip
stretched from the Dorset coast right up to Inverness.
The May “coastal strip” ruling meant that the majority of newly arrived
refugees from Europe, mostly Jews, were among the three thousand people
interned. Otto and Marie were separated and taken into custody as they
landed at Dover. Neurath explained to the British police that he was
the author of the book Modern Man in the Making.
To prove it, he pulled from his pocket a review of the book illustrated
with a photograph of him. This review was one of very few documents and
papers he had brought from the Hague. Neurath later wrote that,
“the bobbies did know Modern Man in the Making, and did hardly believe that the author was with them. Fortunately I had with me a review of my book with a photo of mine”.
If they were pulling his leg, Neurath, with his limited English, did not realise it.
Modern Man in the Making (A.A. Knopf, 1939); front cover and two representative pages Courtesy of the Otto & Marie Neurath Isotype Collection, University of Reading
Otto and Marie are among the notable internees mentioned in François Lafitte’s book The Internment of Aliens,
which was published in late 1940 while the internment policy was still
in place. Otto Neurath is described as “world-famous pioneer of
pictorial statistics” who “fled from Vienna in 1934 because he was a
Social Democrat”. Marie is not mentioned by name but as Neurath’s
“chief statistical assistant to whom he is engaged”. In fact she was
known as a “transformer” – a role that mediated between researchers and
artists, combining artistic and design ability with understanding of
educational theory, statistics and science.
Lafitte’s description of Otto is accurate but hardly touches on his
achievements. Neurath was in fact a polymath, well-versed in economics,
science and philosophy. In Vienna he had established extraordinarily
innovative museums and travelling exhibitions which were amongst the
first to use artificial lighting, interactivity and hands-on exhibits,
night-time opening and film screenings. He also co-founded and named
the influential Vienna Circle, whose philosophy of “logical positivism”
was world-famous.
It was Marie who alerted British friends that she and Otto were in the
country. She was able to do this because while the German and Austrian
men from the Zeemanshoop were immediately arrested, the women were not.
The refugees were transported from Dover to Victoria station. Marie was
taken to the Fulham Institute for the night, a place she described as a
Dickensian poorhouse. The next day she was taken to Holloway. Neurath
was imprisoned in Pentonville. He wrote, “I studied Pentonville, a
famous prison (spies are hanged there)”.
From Pentonville, Neurath went to a makeshift camp at Kempton Park
Racecourse. There the internees were housed in the racecourse
buildings, in stables, and in tents. They slept on mattresses on stone
floors, up to a hundred men to a room. Nearly a month after his arrival
in England, Neurath was shipped to the Isle of Man. He was among the
men taken on two ships, the steam packet Rushen Castle and the smaller
Victoria, between the 11th and the 14th of June. The
journey from Kempton Park to Douglas on the Isle of Man took seventeen
hours.
Neurath was imprisoned in Onchan camp (pronounced Onken), in the
village of Onchan, at the top of Douglas bay. The second world war
internment camps on the Isle of Man were made from the streets in the
towns of Douglas, Ramsey and Port Erin, and the Victorian boarding
houses were requisitioned.
At first, the camp authorities disallowed access to radio and press:
the men built their own radios. Soon they realized that the internees
posed little threat, and the ban on communications was lifted. Inside
the camp a newspaper was published by the internees: the Onchan
Pioneer. A “Popular University” was quickly established, and between
May 1940 and February 1941, four hundred and ninety-six lectures were
held. At least one of these was given by Otto Neurath. According to the
Onchan Pioneer Neurath’s lecture held the record of the highest
attendance for an indoor lecture. Two hundred and fifty men came to
hear him give a lecture in sociology cryptically titled ““How do you
make the tennis court so durable?”.
Marie’s experience of internment is better documented than Neurath’s –
she was interviewed for a book on the internment of women. From other
refugee accounts, we know that the emotional impact of internment was
very varied. For some prisoners it was traumatic, particularly for
those who had already experienced the Nazi concentration camps. Both
Marie and Otto took it remarkably well. Separation from one another was
painful, though they told the authorities that they were married, and
so were able to meet after a few months (Marie was in a women’s camp in
a different town on the island). In letters written after his release,
Neurath insisted it was not a terrible experience for him. He wrote:
“I was more interested in the sociological facts, therefore less
disturbed than some others of my mates. Mary was of the same mood. Both
of us regarded the first weeks in prison etc. as a kind of relaxation
or holidays after the tension in Holland”.
They were released in early February 1941 after appeals from famous
figures such as Julian Huxley and Albert Einstein and immediately
married. Marie became
Neurath’s third wife: his first wife was Anna Schapire-Neurath
(1877-1911). With Anna he translated the Eugenicist Francis Galton’s
Genius and Heredity into German, and had one child, Paul Neurath.
Neurath’s second wife, Olga Hahn (1882-1937) was a highly gifted
mathematician, who had become blind in her early twenties. Olga died in
The Hague, from complications following an operation.
Otto and Marie Neurath (on right, courtesy of the Otto and Marie
Neurath Isotype Collection) immediately set about establishing a new
Isotype
Institute in Oxford. The principal artist of Isotype, Gerd Arntz, had
stayed in the Netherlands. Without their team, and especially without
the graphic talent of Arntz, rebuilding their work in England was
difficult. Even so, the Institute became influential in propaganda,
adult education, town planning, film and information design during the
early 1940s. They made films for the Ministry of Information, worked
with the renowned documentary filmmaker Paul Rotha, and produced
statistical charts to illustrate numerous books. They made charts for
international organizations, and involved themselves in political
groups including the Fabians and the China Campaign. Neurath was
involved in early plans for Britain’s post-war reconstruction, but died
suddenly in December 1945.
Neurath was fifty eight years old when he arrived in Britain. Marie was
forty two. She was attractive, quietly intelligent, and tended to
underplay her own role in the work they did together. She spoke
excellent English, while Neurath joked that he spoke “broken English
fluently”. He was a very compelling character: unusually big for his
generation (in height and girth) with a loud voice. The philosopher
Karl Popper described him as ““a big, tall, exuberant man with flashing
eyes … The impression was of a most unusual personality, of a man of
tremendous vitality and drive.”
Otto Neurath died suddenly in 1945, possibly from a stroke. He had
enjoyed living in Britain and appreciated the “British muddle” and also
the British lack of respect for “genius”. At the time of his
death he was writing about tolerance and brotherhood, and the
re-education of young Germans and Austrians who had been indoctrinated
under the Nazis.
He and Marie were also busy helping the town council of Bilston, near
Wolverhampton, plan their post-war reconstruction. The Town Clerk A.V.
Williams, later remembered that he “made one believe in the dignity of
human beings” and that “the pursuit of beauty and happiness could be
achieved by the common man”.
The Wonder World of Nature: Too small to see; by Marie Neurath (Max Parrish, 1956) Courtesy of the Otto & Marie Neurath Isotype Collection, University of Reading
Marie Neurath continued living and working in Britain. She died in
London in 1986. She had taken Isotype in a new and influential
direction in her beautifully designed and educational children’s books.
They were designed on the basis of a deep understanding of how children
conceptualise the world, and today are highly collectible. Many people
who grew up in Britain between the 1950s and the 1970s, would recognize
these books from their own childhood.
Michelle Henning Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies University of the West of England
Michelle Henning has given
numerous conference papers on the work of Otto Neurath and is writing
an account of his life. The principal archive of Otto and Mrie
Neurath's work in Britain is the Otto and Marie Neurath Isotype Collection in the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication at the University of Reading.
Leo Polak with his wife Lucie Polak-van den Bergh, their son Thijs and nephew Herman Marx
Leo Polak aged 50 and his wife Lucie, 53, were both lawyers;
they were a prosperous Dutch family living in a modern Bauhaus style
house in The Hague but decided to leave
because they were Jewish. Their nephew Marx found out that there was
the possibilty of escaping to England on the Zeemanshoop.
They abandoned their home and everything
they owned only taking with them personal documents. Their 21 year old
son was at home but their daughter, Willy, worked and lived at Schiedam
near Rotterdam and was left behind.
After landing in Dover they left immediately for London - they were
shocked by the cockroaches in the reception centre where they stayed.
Much later they emigrated to the United States and lived in New York
but Thijs went to California and studied electronic engineering.Their daughter,
Willy, who remained in the Netherlands was sent to a concentration camp
in Westerbork and later to Theresienstadt but survived. Her parents returned to the Netherlands in 1947 and died in their seventies.
Based on an article by Danny Verbaan in Nieuwsblad van het Noorden
28 February 1998, page 19
Reidemeister, Marie (later married Otto Neurath)
Marie Reidemeister was born on the 27 May 1898 and after
studying at Göttingen and Munich universities began work with Otto
Neurath as a transformer (designer) in the teams that made graphic displays of social information at the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum in Wien
(Social and economic museum of Vienna). In 1934 after the brief
civil war in Austria she and Neurath along with the graphic artist,
Gerd Arntz moved to The Hague. She is credited with inventing the name
Isotype (International System of TYpographic Picture Education) to
replace the redundant phrase "Vienna Method" formerly used for their
work. She accompanied Otto Neurath, who was both Jewish and a Social
Democrat, to England but Gerd Arntz remained in the Netherlands. They
married and established the Isotype Institute in Oxford to continue
their work. After the death of Otto Neurath in 1945 she became well
known in her own right as the author illustrator of a popular series of
colourful childrens' book which had a great influence on children
growing up in the postwar years. After her retirement in 1971, she gave
the working material of the Isotype Institute to the University of
Reading, where it is housed in the Department of Typography &
Graphic Communication as the Otto and Marie Neurath Isotype Collection.
She devoted her retirement to establishing a record of Otto Neurath’s
life and work, and editing and translating his writings. She died in
London on the 10 October 1986. For further details of her life and work
see the entry for Otto Neurath.
Singer
Simon Speijer Simon was known from birth as 'Dik', short for dikkert, meaning fat. He was the son of Ro Cohen, the sister of Anna Velmans (below), who was divorced from Dik's father and lived in Scheveningen with her partner, John Blitz.
Dik accompanied his mother and stepfather to the Dutch East Indies
with Joseph and Anna Velmans and his cousin, Loet Velmans. Dik was a
POW in a Japanese slave
labor camp on Sumatra. He was extremely badly treated but survived.
Shortly after his repatriation to Holland he emigrated to the U.S.
where Dik and his wife had a son and a daughter. He was employed
by an
international trading company in New York. His company assigned him to
Haiti and later to Miami. His job included importing monkeys for
which there was a market among the zoos and bio research labs in the
U.S. Late in life he studied and counselled in some form of psychology.
He died in Amsterdam around the year 2000.
Joseph and Loet Velmans' family had been
living in the Netherland for 150 years when he was born in 1923 and he
was ten years old when his parents, Anna Velmans, "moved to Scheveningen, a fishing
village bordering The Hague" and the Nazis came to power in Germany.
His grandparents still lived in the old Jewish quarter of Amsterdam
where 80,000 Jews lived before the war (but only 5,000 remained when it
ended). His grandfather "a shy taciturn man who became eloquent when
Father was his sole audience ... was a diamond polisher by profession and a devoted member of his union".His mother, abuyer
at the largest department store in Amsterdam, the Bijenkorf (Beehive)
travelled to Europe's fashion capitals and embarrassed her son by
dressing him in the latest fashions.
They
were "Yom Kippur Jews", token
Jews, who celebrated the great festivals but did not attend services.
This would not have saved them from the concentration camps had they
not escaped from Scheveningen on the Zeemanshoop on the day the Netherlands surrendered to German forces. Click on his name in the
heading above to find out what fate had in store for Loet Velmans and
his family after they landed at Dover.
Max Louis Wessel
Max
Wessel came from a well-to-do Jewish family and was born at The Hague
on the 28 June 1919 to Barend and Josephina (née Heimans) Wessel where
his father was the owner of an advertising agency. Max studied at the
Lyceum, the equivalent of a German Gymnasium
or an English grammar scchool, and on the 3 July 1939 began his
compulsary years military training with the 2nd Regiment Luchtdoelartillerie (Anti-aircraft Regiment) at The Hague. His service record indicates that this was postponed for a year on the 19 October 1939.
On arrival at Dover aboard HMS Venomous Max
went to London and like Karel Dahmen and Jo Bongaerts found neither the
Dutch Navy or the army had any need for untrained volunteers. The
Netherlands Shipping and Trading Committee in Leadenhall Street found him a position on the MV Barendrecht, a 9,385 grt tanker, one of the nine hundred Dutch merchant ships which were at sea when the Netherlands surrendered. The Barendrecht had been built at Odense, Denmark, for the Van Ommeren shipping company in 1938. Itwas not a good choice. MV Barendrecht left Tilbury Docks on 14 September 1940 to join the northern fleet at its base in Scapa Flow and was
bombed in the Thames estuary on the 22 September 1940. A heavy calibre
bomb struck the chart room, penetrated the top deck and exploded
alongside tank four. Captain J.A. Osté and the second mate J.J.
Post were seriously wounded and died later. Max Wessel was
wounded in one eye and a knee and taken to Dartford hospital but the
ship, although badly damaged was saved. Max was unable to return to sea
but on the 4 December 1940 he began work in the office of
the Netherlands Shipping & Trading Co., London. The MV Barendrecht survived the war and was scrapped at Jacksonville, Florida, in 1962.
This photograph of Max Wessel's parents, Barend and Josephina (née Heimans) Wessel and his older sister, Clara
Johanna Weisglas-Wessel with her husband, Willy Weisglas, was taken at
The Hague on the 8 April 1941. By the time Max returned to the
Netherlands in July 1945 they were all dead. His sister and her husband
had died at Auschwitz on the 29 August 1942 and his parents had
suffered a similar fate on the 14 February 1943. Without any strong
family connections to keep him in the Netherlands Max decided to emigrate to Australia and gave Professor Max Weisglas, the brother of Clara's husband, as his nearest
surviving relative on his application form. His photograph (above) was taken at this time.
He arrived at Sydney by plane on the 13 January 1951. On the same plane was Sera Boas (also
known as Sara and, later Sue) who would become his wife. She and her
brother, Levi Samuel Boas and his family, were travelling to New Zealand with their parents. Max had
fallen in love but had to leave the plane at Sydney. He joined her in
New Zealand as soon as he could. The electoral rolls for 1954 and 1957
show Max and Sera Wessel were living in Auckland, New Zealand. He gave
his occupation as a salesman in 1954 and as a secretary in 1957.
Max and Sera Wessel were introduced to the daughter of Joop van der Laan a fellow passenger on the Zeemanshoop, by a common friend, Sophie van Beek, and got to know them well. Sophie recalledMax's love of literature and the three years he and Sera lived in New York:
"Sera’s brother and his family went to America
[and settled in California] and after some years Max and Sera followed. Max worked for a book
publisher which suited him as he was very interested in literature and
knew a great deal about this subject. They were there for two to three
years but left in 1959 and
moved permanently to Sydney, Australia. I don’t know if Max was an
accountant; I think he worked as a bookkeeper. Max and Sera had no
children." (Sophie van Beek)
Max Wessel's love of literature is best illustrated by his poem about the Zeemanshoop, set in two columns, published by the Haagsche Courant, The Hague, with a short account of the voyage on the 14 May 1991.
Max sent a copy of the poem to Malie van der Laan, the daughter of
Joop van der Laan, with a letter pointing out that that "the 'poem'
has been printed vertically instead of horizontally as well as having
spelling mistakes."
Radboud Hack, the son of the "Captain" of the Zeemanshoop,
has translated the correct version of the poem into English, a
difficult task since "many words have a connotation that is not evident
in their English equivalents and, like much Dutch literature about the
war, uses words that have a specific, solemn, patriotic and heroic
connotation, often referring back to the heroic history of the
Netherlands in the seventeenth century".
The English translation is set alongside the original Dutch version below:
Max Wessel died in St Ives, a suburb of Sydney, Australia on 7 February 2003
and his wife Sera on the 6 October 2009.
Acknowledgements
This account of the life of Max
Louis Wessel is based on information received from Lis Drew, the grand daughter
of Joop van der Laan, a passenger on the Zeemanshoop. Both families lived in Australia and were introduced by a mutual friend. It is based on the recollections of Sophie
van Beek, the widow of that friend, research by Lis
Drew, the service record of Max Wessel and details of the MV Barendrecht supplied by Dr A.V. van Vliet of the Netherlands Institute of Military History. Henk Meurs, Wout Smit, Radboud Hack and Mily Weisglas, the sister in law of Willy Weisglas, were also very helpful.Max
Wessel gave Mily's husband, Professor Max Weisglas, as his nearest
surviving relative when he emmigrated to Australia in January 1951.
This passenger has a Czech
name and may have fled to the Netherlands after Hitler's troops
occupied the Sudetenland but there were many people of Czech origin
living in Germany. At present his reason for being in the Netherlands
and leaving for England on the Zeemanshoop remains a mystery.
Do please e-mail the publisher if you can provide further details about him - or any of the other passengers on the Zeemanshoop.
The passengers and crew of the Zeemanshoop
were amongst the first of around 1,700 Engelandvaarders who made the
perilous journey from occupied Holland to England. Many escaped
overland through France and Spain but others crossed the North Sea to
the east coast of England. TheSociety of Engelandvaarders(Genootschap Engelandvaarders) was
formed in 1979 and maintains contact with the dwindling number of
alive today through the publication of a newsletter, Schakel.
It would have been quite impossible to assemble these details of the lives of the passengers and crew of the Zeemanshoop
without a great deal of help. In some cases this is specifically
acknowledged at the end of each biographical sketch but I would also
like to acknowledge here the help of Wout Smit who searched the
Internet for Dutch language material, Jan Visser, Henk Meurs, the members of the War over
Holland Forum and Charles Bartelings, the Treasurer of theGenootschap Engelandvaarders and Editor of their newsletter, Schakel.
Jo
Bongaerts and Karel Dahmen grew up together at Roermond in the south
east of the Netherlands near the German border. They became good
friends and were both students at Delft University when Germany invaded
the Netherlands. They escaped to England aboard the Zeemanshoop and briefly served on Dutch merchant ships but their lives then took different paths. 
Karel Dahmen was one of the four students who deserve most of the credit for bringing the Zeemanshoop and its passengers to safety. His
decision to cycle from Delft to Scheveningen after hearing the
broadcast announcement of the surrender of Netherland forces changed
the course of his life. After arrival at Dover aboard HMS Venomous he joined the SS Jupiter under Captain Dekker as assistant engineer before joining the Royal Netherlands Navy as an Ordinary Seaman (OD) on the HNMS Jacob van Heemskerk where he became the RDF Operator. 
'Harry' Hack was the 'captain' of the crew of four students who took the Zeemanshoop to
sea. He was born at Oud en Nieuw Gastel on the 23 August 1913 and in 1933 did his compulsory military training in the Regiment Genietroepen (engineers) of The Royal Netherlands Army (Koninklijke Landmacht). He was studying mechanical engineering at the University
of Delft when he was called up in October 1938 to serve once again in the third Regiment of Engineers (Genietroepen)
but in December 1939 was released on grounds of ill health and was able to
resume his studies at Delft. The experience he gained while
serving as an apprentice engineer on a voyage to the
Netherlands East
Indies enabled him to keep the Zeemanshoop's
diesel engine going. 
Marien de Jonge was born at Weert, a small town in the south east of
the Netherlands, on the 25 September 1911, the oldest son of Jhr Ir.
Johan Maurits de Jonge and Jkvr. Pauline Clasina Berg. The family were
Jonkheer (Jhr.), minor aristocrats, with a long and distinguished
history, and his father was an
engineer working on the construction of a railway bridge at Weert. 
Marie’s experience of internment is better documented than Neurath’s –
she was interviewed for a book on the internment of women. From other
refugee accounts, we know that the emotional impact of internment was
very varied. For some prisoners it was traumatic, particularly for
those who had already experienced the Nazi concentration camps. Both
Marie and Otto took it remarkably well. Separation from one another was
painful, though they told the authorities that they were married, and
so were able to meet after a few months (Marie was in a women’s camp in
a different town on the island). In letters written after his release,
Neurath insisted it was not a terrible experience for him. He wrote: 
Leo Polak aged 50 and his wife Lucie, 53, were both lawyers;
they were a prosperous Dutch family living in a modern Bauhaus style
house in The Hague but decided to leave
because they were Jewish. Their nephew Marx found out that there was
the possibilty of escaping to England on the Zeemanshoop.
They abandoned their home and everything
they owned only taking with them personal documents. Their 21 year old
son was at home but their daughter, Willy, worked and lived at Schiedam
near Rotterdam and was left behind.
