Burning Injustice (6 Pics)

 

Willem Arondeus (22 August 1894 – 1 July 1943) was an impoverished artist and writer before the Second World War, and was an "out" gay man from about 1920. Following the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940, he turned his skills to producing underground publications and forged documents for the Dutch Resistance. He became a leader in the resistance group "CKC" - the Centrale Kunstenaars Commissie - Central Artist's Commission, a group which, alongside providing artistic, printing, and similar services to resistance groups, also supported artists who refused to sign up to the Nazi-directed culture office, which left them without legal work. He led the CKC team that, in March 1943, engaged in a spectacular resistance attack which in its complexity, resembles the plot of a 'heist' movie*. The target was Amsterdam's Population Registry Office, a vast archive of official documents.

[Picture: Salome (1916) by 20 year old Arondeus.] As the Netherlands was a developed western European state, those who wished to fight the occupying Nazi forces had to contend with the marrying of Nazi control with the Dutch State's good record keeping, particularly in the area of religion (a legacy of Dutch sectarianism) which weakened the utility of forged documents like identity cards. Such good record-keeping also meant that quack Nazi race-theory could be imposed all the more effectively, with family histories open to interrogation to discover Jewish ancestors. Arondeus' group correctly thought that without official records to cross-check, repression would be slowed, and forgeries would become more effective, so resolved to burn down the Population Registry Office.

[Picture: sign indicating you're entering the "Jewish Ghetto" of Amsterdam, the Nazis attempted to isolated one area of the city (surrounded by canals, with raiseable bridges) as a ghetto in February 1941, but were thwarted by Dutch refusal to cooperate, with Dutch residents refusing to move out. The signage remained in place and some Jews from outside Amsterdam were forced to move into the city, but compared to efforts in annexed and occupied Poland & eastern Europe, this was very soft-touch, due to the Nazis hoping to induce the 'Germanic' Dutch to be willing co-conspirators in the Reich. To this end, the German occupation government of the Netherlands was "civil" rather than "military", and made use of the 100,000 members of the Dutch Nazi movement (NSB) as the 'Dutch face' of German control.] The attack in March 1943 was notable for its complexity and bloodlessness, conspirators wore fake police uniforms made by the tailor Sjoerd Bakker to arrive and "investigate" a spurious bomb threat, while two medical students in the group put two guards to sleep by injection and moved them to the nearby Artis zoo. The burning of the records was achieved using timed explosives stolen from former Dutch Army stores, while within the office the group also stole blank templates of official documents, and emptied the office's safe of ƒ50,000. Amsterdam's fire brigade had also been tipped off about the attack, so when the alarm was raised they responded sluggishly, and upon arrival hose teams deliberately kept dousing surviving filing cabinets to hopefully water-damage records held within.

[Picture: The aftermath of the attack.] The attack was a major propaganda coup for the resistance, but is estimated to have only destroyed 800,000 records - a mere 15% of the total held. After a ƒ10,000 (today, over €100,000) reward was posted by the occupiers, the CKC group was betrayed by a person who remains unknown, leading the Gestapo to planning documents held by Arondeus, and eventually 14 participants, including Willem Arondeus, were executed. Of the 14, Arondeus and two other men, Sjoerd Bakker and Johan Brouwer, were openly homosexual (it seems likely much of CKC was LGBT+ to some extent or another), and Arondeus was adamant that this fact be noted, informing his lawyer during his trial to make sure they "tell the people that homosexuals are not by definition weak!".

[Picture: The Musem of the Tropics (Tropenmuseum) was used for the trial of Arondeus and other members of CKC.] Sjoerd Bakker was Arondeus' partner, and during his trial Arondeus asked that Bakker be given clemency, claiming that he had induced Bakker into the resistance by emotional pressure; but when Bakker took the stand, he denied this was the case, saying he was a member of the resistance by conviction, ensuring his execution alongside Arondeus. Arondeus' lawyer during his trial was LGBT+ and Romani rights activist Lau Mazirel (1907-1974), who was also member of CKC, who had not been rumbled by the Gestapo. The wider CKC group also included the lesbian conductor and cellist Frieda Belinfante (1904-1995), she did not take part in the raid as she was too short to be convincingly disguised as a Policeman, she would go on to set up the Orange County Philharmonic in the United States, before being dismissed due to her sexual orientation in 1962.

[Picture: A Dutch Resistance Memorial Cross (Verzetsherdenkingskruis), Arondeus was posthumously awarded this in 1984. The horizontal inscription is "to expel tyranny", a line from the Dutch national anthem.] While there is no certainty, it is likely that the attack in March 1943 allowed an unknown number of people, particularly Jews, to escape detection by the Nazi authorities, for this Arondeus was declared a "Righteous Amongst the Nations" by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in 1986. Today, the Dutch Resistance Museum (Verzetsmuseum) is located on the same street as the former Population Registration Office; artfully, the museum is adorned with a Star of David, as the building was built in 1876 by the Jewish singing society Oefening Baart Kunst (practice makes perfect).