1943: Willem Arondeus, gay resistance fighter
17 comments July 1st, 2013 Meaghan
(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.)
On this day in 1943, Willem Arondeus and eleven other Dutch resistance members were executed for sabotage and treason in connection with their anti-Nazi activities in the Dutch Underground.
Arondeus, an artist, novelist and biographer, was rather old for a resistance fighter; he was 48 at the time of his death.
He was the son of theater costume designers and one of six children, but became estranged from his family after he came out as gay at the age of seventeen. At a time when homosexuality was still illegal and deeply taboo, Arondeus spoke openly about it.
For seven years in the 1930s he lived with his lover and struggled to make a living. In 1940, after the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, he joined the resistance.
Arondeus utilized his artistic skills by forging identity papers for Dutch Jews. (Being himself part of a persecuted minority, perhaps he felt a special kinship with them.) He urged other artists to stand up against the Nazi invaders.
On March 17, 1943, he and other members of his resistance unit set the Amsterdam General Registry Office on fire, trying to destroy all the original records so the false identity papers couldn’t be checked. They successfully destroyed about ten thousand records, but five days later the entire unit was arrested. Their conviction was a foregone conclusion.
Arondeus said he hoped that by his life and death, he could prove that “homosexuals are not cowards.” Yad Vashem has honored him as Righteous Among the Nations. (pdf)
On this day..
- 1523: Jan van Essen and Hendrik Vos, the first Lutheran martyrs - 2020
- 1896: The Rufus Buck Gang, heaven-dream't - 2019
- 1681: Archbishop Oliver Plunkett, the last Catholic martyr in Great Britain - 2018
- 1941: Francisco Escribano, for supplying the Spanish Maquis - 2017
- 1555: John Bradford, in the grace of God - 2016
- 1819: Neyonibe and Naugechek - 2015
- 1413: Pierre des Essarts - 2014
- 2010: Michael Perry, Herzog subject - 2012
- 1569: Three Huguenot Parisians - 2011
- 1346: Simon Pouillet - 2010
- 1947: The avatar of Doctor Wonder - 2009
- 1766: Jean-François de la Barre, freethinker martyr - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Arson,Artists,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Disfavored Minorities,Execution,Germany,Guest Writers,History,Homosexuals,Mass Executions,Netherlands,Occupation and Colonialism,Other Voices,Power,Shot,Wartime Executions
Tags: 1940s, 1943, haarlem, july 1, willem arondeus, world war ii
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