On this date in 1944, Dutch Resistance hero Boy Ecury was shot by the occupying Germans.
Ecury (English Wikipedia entry | Dutch) grew up in Oranjestad, capital of the Dutch-controlled Caribbean island of Aruba, but had packed off to the Netherlands to finish school by the time World War II broke out. He spent the early Forties with a Resistance group sabotaging German assets and the like.
This insurgent clique eventually got rolled up, and Boy Ecury was arrested on November 5, 1944. He had only that one night to enjoy the legendary hospitality of the occupiers before he and several others of his group were shot the next day.
The young martyr’s body was repatriated to Aruba after the war and buried with honors; a public memorial still stands to him in Oranjestad.
Boy’s sister, the venerable poet Nydia Ecury, just passed away earlier this year.
On this day..
- 1837: Luis Candelas, urban bandit - 2020
- 1941: Shura Chekalin, Hero of the Soviet Union - 2019
- 1938: Kasym Tynystanov, Kyrgyz intellectual - 2018
- 1717: Three spared en route to Tyburn, thanks to Jack Ketch's debts - 2017
- 1922: Ali Kemal - 2016
- 1863: James Murphy, after a reunion - 2015
- 1964: Vuyisile Mini, Zinakile Mkaba and Wilson Khayingo - 2014
- 1918: Roman Malinovsky, tinker, tailor, soldier, spy - 2013
- 1600: Ishida Mitsunari, Konishi Yukinaga and Ankokuji Ekei for the Tokugawa Shogunate - 2011
- 1793: Philippe Egalite, hoisted on his own petard - 2010
- 2003: Four for the oil of Chad - 2009
- 1730: Hans Hermann von Katte, Frederick the Great's lover - 2008
- 1914: Carl Hans Lody - 2007