Resistance

Poster conveying a warning from the NS to its employees, ca 1942, Railway Museum Collection.

The NS management board prohibited all forms of theft or abuse of air-raid protection materials, such as gas masks and tools. The poster warned employees that the Germans regarded any such acts as sabotage, which would be punished severely.

Poster to warn NS employees and members of the ‘Wehrmacht’, ca 1943, Railway Museum Collection.

The German ‘Bahnbevollmachtigte’ warned the employees of NS and the members of the Wehrmacht that unauthorised interference with train services would not be tolerated. Services could not be changed in any way without prior permission of the ‘Transportkommandantur’.

Two signs for passengers, with texts on the back written in pencil, 1942, Railway Museum Collection.

There were signs in trains warning passengers that they would be fined if found travelling without a valid ticket. Two of those signs had anti-German texts written on the back in pencil, referring to Anton Mussert, Reinhard Heydrich and Arthur Seyss-Inquart. The author has remained unknown.

Letter from the Imperial Commissioner’s Office dated 25 June 1942, HUA 1867, box 399.

The correspondence between the German and Dutch railway companies includes several letters in which the Germans complained about the anti-German attitude of NS employees. One example is this letter to the NS management board from the Imperial Commissioner’s Office, on behalf of Seyss-Inquart, dated 3 July 1942, registering an official complaint about the hostility of employees at Maastricht railway station against the Germans. According to the letter, NS staff were even found to have openly insulted members of the NSB. One fireman by name of De Vaal was singled out as a particularly subversive individual.

Award pertaining to a painting (which has remained unknown), donated by people who had been in hiding, 21 November 1946.

Some managers succeeded in arranging jobs at NS for people who risked being arrested by the Germans. These included several police officers who, apparently, could not or did not want to work for the police any longer during the occupation. They were offered a job at NS. In November 1946, as a token of their gratitude, they presented the NS management board with a painting and the associated award. They praised the ‘truly patriotic understanding and cooperation’ that NS had shown by providing a safe haven for them at various of its departments.

New Year’s card for 1941, signed by D.J. Schiferli, gift by D. Schiferli, Railway Museum Collection.

Dirk Johan Schiferli served as Public Relations Officer at NS from 1939 to 1945. In the first year of the occupation, he arranged for a very special New Year’s card to be made for all railway employees and NS business contacts, in the shape of a ration book with several coupons. However, instead of food items or goods, the coupons entitled the holders to ‘friendship, unity, loyalty, peace, truth and justice’. Schiferli joined the resistance movement in the course of the occupation. He distributed resistance papers and wrote copy for them, together with his friend Willem Geuze. Geuze was a member of the board of the Van Boekhoven printing company, which also published the NS timetable booklets. There was no way however he could use the company as a base for producing illegal brochures, pamphlets or flyers, as the other board member was a convinced Dutch Nazi. Using a carrier cycle, Geuze did manage to smuggle tonnes of paper for resistance pamphlets out of the printing shop. He was caught in the act and executed on 15 September 1944. Schiferli however managed to keep a step ahead of the Germans and found employment in the world of advertising after the war. He gained fame as the creator of what would become one of the most popular marketing slogans in the Netherlands: ‘Heerlijk, Helder, Heineken’. He was also the person who coined the term ‘frisdrank’, which is Dutch for soft drink.

Photo of Greta Gerda Nijdam as service employee at NS, 1939-1940, Railway Museum Collection.

Greta Gerda Nijdam (1918-2001, known as Greetje) began her training as service employee at NS in November 1939 and started working at the service office of Leeuwarden station in June 1940. Her resistance activities started on a small scale, this included warning young men about razzias held at the station exits and lending money to travelers who suddenly needed to travel and where short of money. When the eighteen-year-old Jeanne Evenhuis (1924-1994) started working at Leeuwarden railway station in 1942, the two women quickly developed a good relationship. Jeanne introduced Greetje to the organized resistance in Friesland. Their roles as service employees at NS proved beneficial. They were involved in guiding and placing Jewish children with hiding families. For instance, in 1943, Greetje placed the Jewish boy Wim Dresden with her own family in Heerenveen. Greetje also helped with the retrieval and placement of Lieutenant Erwin J. Bevins after his plane was shot down. In early September 1944, the Nijdam family along with two Jews who stayed with the family, went into hiding on a farm in Oldeboorn because her father refused to follow an order from the Germans. After being betrayed, her father, brother, and cousin were arrested, while Greetje, her mother and the two Jews managed to escape. They found a new hiding place, where Greetje continued her resistance activities. Both her family and the Jewish individuals survived the war.

Photograph of Jacob Jan Hamelink, Memorial park in Bloemendaal, and picture of the plaque in memory of Hamelink at the Workshop Haarlem.

The best-known resistance fighter among NS employees was Jacob Jan Hamelink (1902-1942). A welder at the Central Workshop in Haarlem, he joined the resistance movement from the first days of the occupation. Against the express wish of the NS management board, and much to its concern, he tried not only to incite his colleagues to silent sabotage but to persuade them to take part in the February Strike of 1941. The strike had been called in response to the anti-Jewish measures imposed by the German occupying forces. The NS management board’s position was that employees should not go on strike unless ordered to do so by the Dutch government.

Documents in German and Dutch about an anti-German pamphlet in the Haarlem workshop, 1 September 1941, HUA 1867, box 399.

In a letter dated 1 September 1941, Gustav Giesberger informed the German authorities that pamphlets with anti-German texts had been found at the NS workshop in Haarlem, the place where resistance fighter Jacob Jan Hamelink was employed. Giesberger added that it was impossible to determine who had distributed the pamphlets.

Honororable discharge grant of Jacob Jan Hamelink, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.

Feeling that he should not contribute to the services performed by NS for the Wehrmacht, Jan Jacob Hamelink reported sick in the autumn of 1941, but was repeatedly declared fit to work. Eventually, on 25 November 1941, he handed in his resignation at NS, and he was granted honourable discharge on 30 November of that year. From then on he devoted himself entirely to underground operations, with fatal consequences in 1942. It was probably due to his voluntary resignation that NS failed to include him in the list of the fallen in the Spoor- en Tramwegen magazine. In 1948, they did include his name on the memorial set up at the Haarlem workshop, where he had been employed.

Letter dated 8 May 1946 on pension provisions for the widow of J.J. Hamelink, HUA 948, 571.

In early 1946, the 1940-1945 Foundation asked NS to explain whether any arrangements had been made for a pension for the widow of resistance fighter Jacob Jan Hamelink. NS investigated the matter, and the findings were reported in this letter to President Hupkes. It appeared that following Hamelink’s death in 1942, his widow had received a pension of 7 guilders a week for a number of years. The payments had been transferred to underground organisations in 1944 and were discontinued after the war, as Hamelink had resigned voluntarily.

Photographs of J.S.H. (Jo) Lokerman, year unknown, collection of the Lokerman heirs.

J.S.H. (Jo) Lokerman (1901-1945) was an engine driver based in Maastricht. A convinced social-democrat, he was soon involved with the resistance movement. He cancelled his membership of the trade union after it had been placed under German control, distributed illicit newspapers and magazines, assisted Allied pilots and POWs and carried out a variety of small-scale sabotage actions on the railways. Later in the war he helped Jews find places where they could go into hiding, and provided them with food coupons and forged identity papers. He was betrayed in 1944, after joining a branch of the National Organisation for Helping People in Hiding (LO). Not long before the liberation, Lokerman died from exhaustion in the Neuengamme concentration camp in Germany.

Pamphlet from the VARA Radio Guide that Jo Lokerman had put up in the engine drivers’ room, collection of the Lokerman heirs.

Just before the occupation, the socialist Association of Worker Radio Amateurs (VARA) published a call for ‘freedom and democracy’ in its radio guide. Lokerman put up this pamphlet in the engine drivers’ room after the capitulation of the Dutch armed forces, encouraging his colleagues to offer mental resistance. In hand-written comments, he added his thoughts about the attitude of VARA chairman Arend de Vries, who had decided to cooperate with the Germans.

Letter to the NV Executive Board dated 15 August 1940, collection of the Lokerman heirs.

The Dutch Association for Railway and Tramway Personnel (NV) was placed under NSB control in July 1940. Many members of this union felt uncomfortable about this, including Jo Lokerman, who cancelled his membership almost immediately. An attempt by the NV board to make him change his mind was to no avail; Lokerman stuck to his decision. Having joined the organisation when it was a ‘free and independent trade union’, he fundamentally disagreed with its new course.

Identity cards of Cornelis de Cock, Railway Museum Collection.

NS employee Cornelis de Cock (1895-1954) served as Supervisor 1st Class at the NS Road an Public Works Department in Amsterdam. Before the war he had been a member of the Voluntary Home Reserve Corps, and he joined the resistance as an active member during the war. Together with several of his colleagues at NS, starting in 1942 he secretly forwarded information about German military transports to the Allied forces through the Ordedienst (OD), a major resistance group. He used a false name, Cornelis Prins, for this purpose. During the railway strike, De Cock was involved in the distribution of pay among railway workers in Amsterdam who had joined the strike. In November 1944 he was issued an identity card in his real name.

Medals: Cross of Merit, Cross for Army Officers and Mobilisation War Cross, Railway Museum Collection.

After the war, Cornelis de Cock received a number of medals for his contribution to the resistance movement within the railway organisation. Serving as the liaison between the Ordedienst and NS, De Cock was engaged in the provision of military intelligence. He also led sabotage campaigns on the Dutch railways and was involved with the distribution of pay among employees in Amsterdam participating in the railway strike.

Photograph and document of Th.W.L. Baron van Heemstra, courtesy of the Van Heemstra heirs.

Baron Th.W.L. (Wido) van Heemstra (1883-1945) was Chief Engineer at the signalling department in Nijmegen. During the railway strike, the NS management board instructed him to distribute cash and food coupons among employees who had gone into hiding. In March 1945, the Germans caught him carrying forged ID documents and arrested him. On 31 March 1945, just days before the liberation of Zutphen, he and eight other prisoners were executed. Their bodies were thrown into the river IJssel and were not recovered until after the liberation. After the war, Van Heemstra was reburied at the Rusthof cemetery near Amersfoort. He was awarded the Resistance Cross posthumously in recognition for his bravery and policy. Only 94 people have ever received this honour.

ID document held by Giesberger (under a false name, Te Winckel), 1941, Railway Museum Collection.

From 1941, Gustav Giesberger, who worked for NS as Head of the Exploitation Department and was the most important contact person with the Germans, used a forged ID document under his false name, Gerrit te Winckel. It is not known exactly when and where he used this document, or for what purpose. He himself stated that he regularly passed on information about military transports to the resistance. However, according to Marie Anne Tellegen, a resistance fighter also known as ‘Dr Max’, members of the resistance were not entirely sure they could trust Giesberger. She felt he was a difficult and unpredictable person who tended to ‘run with the hare and hunt with the hounds’.

Menu for the dinner on the occasion of G.F.H. Giesberger’s departure, 30 June 1950, Railway Museum Collection, 29061.

Giesberger was during the war Head of Operations and worked as Chief Liaison intensively with the Germans. After the war he promoted to the position of NS President. He retired in 1950. An artist called ‘Schokk’ designed the menu for his farewell dinner party. The telephone wire connecting Utrecht and London emphasised that Giesberger had been in contact with the Dutch government exiled in London through a secret telephone switchboard in the Main Administrative Building (HGB III). Giesberger himself confirmed this link in 1953 when heard by the committee of inquiry that investigated wartime government policy. He declared that he had communicated with the Dutch government in London from an early stage, via resistance fighter ‘Cootje van den Bosch’. Through this link, the government had told him that NS should continue all its services for the Germans, including the transports of Jews, till further notice. Further investigation is required to establish whether, and if so, how Giesberger received instructions from the government, and exactly what those instructions were.

Photograph of the presentation of the King’s Medal on 4 April 1949, Railway Museum Collection.

Gustav Giesberger (third from the right) was decorated with the ‘King’s Medal’ at the British Embassy in The Hague on 4 April 1949. This was a high British honour conferred on individuals who had shown exceptional valour in assisting the Allied forces. In 1951, Giesberger also became a Knight of the French Legion of Honour and received the French war cross. ‘Risking detection by the enemy, he gathered extremely important information about the movement of enemy troops from as early as 1941 and passed it on to the Allied forces’, wrote the Nieuwsblad van het Noorden newspaper on 27 December 1951.

Small telephone switchboard, ca 1935; photograph of telex room in HGB III, ca 1950, Railway Museum Collection.

Against the express wish of the NS management board, on 30 April 1943 more than 900 employees at the NS head office and ticket-clerks at Utrecht Central Station went on strike in solidarity with the soldiers that were once again taken captive by the Germans as POWs. The strike began at Machinefabriek Stork & Co in Hengelo and spread to companies and farms throughout the country, including the telex and telephone switchboard at the NS head office. The woman who headed this department, Hendrika Maria van Piggelen, was said to be the person who had incited her team and other employees to go on strike. Telex operator G. Hekket then sent a message to 18 railway stations claiming that NS had called a collective strike starting at two o’clock that afternoon – a claim that the management board was quick to deny.

Letter of apology written by Ms Hekket, and a list of the names of the people who had joined the strike, HUA 948/570.

The management board urged all those who had joined the strike at the NS head office and Utrecht Central Station on 30 April 1943 to return to work immediately and sign a list. They would remain exempted from German reprisals only if they obeyed this instruction. In response, all employees went back to work. President Hupkes then destroyed the list of names to prevent it from ending up with the Germans. Even so, another list was drawn up later stating the exact numbers of people who had gone on strike and the departments where they worked. G. Hekket, the telex operator who had telexed the call to come out on strike to 18 railway stations, wrote a short statement – probably at the management board’s request – in which she apologised for her ‘impulsive’ action. Despite her apology, she was arrested by the Germans.

Document dated 31 May 1943 concerning the transport of Ms Hekket to a ‘house of correction’ in Germany, HUA 1867, file 52.

Immediately after the strike, the Germans issued a warrant for the arrest of G. Hekket, who had transmitted a strike call by telex to 18 railway stations. She was sentenced to fifteen years of detention in a house of correction. On 31 May 1943, the NS management board received a letter from a German court stating that Ms Hekket was to be transferred to Germany. Remarkably, the letter asserts that this was in Ms Hekket’s best interest: the hard work would make the time seem to pass more quickly.

Article on Hendrika Maria van Piggelen, from: Spoor- en Tramwegen, 22 November 1945.

The primary instigator of the strike of April 1943 at the NS head office was Hendrika Maria van Piggelen – at least that is what her colleagues claimed. Initially, she was only demoted and transferred to a smaller telephone switchboard. Later on charges were brought against her after all, and several colleagues were found willing to testify against her. Reportedly, Giesberger encouraged her to make a full confession, having promised her that he would get her out of trouble. Nevertheless, Van Piggelen was sentenced to 18 months’ detention in a German house of correction – an ordeal that she would not survive. She died in Stadtkreis Bautzen near Dresden and achieved recognition as a resistance fighter after the war. Her actions were praised in an article in the Spoor- en Tramwegen magazine in 1945.

Spanner of the group surrounding communist resistance fighter Wim Hulst, Resistance Museum Collection.

Some of the local resistance groups in the Netherlands focused on sabotaging railway services – both before the railway strike and during the strike itself, when there were practically no trains except for trains with a German crew. Resistance fighters used a spanner to loosen the bolts on the rails, causing any passing train to derail. This particular spanner was used by the group surrounding communist resistance fighter Wim Hulst (1916-1998) in the Zaanstreek area of North-Holland. Hulst was also responsible for the distribution of underground newspaper De Waarheid.

Report dated 9 February 1945 on the issue involving the railway bridge across Nauernaschevaart, Jan Brasser dossier, Resistance Museum Collection, Amsterdam.

On 9 February 1945, P. Roos – his real name was Dirk Reurslag – of a resistance group in the Zaanstreek area wrote a report about the sabotage action on the railway bridge across Nauernaschevaart. The removal of two plates had caused the total destruction of both the bridge and a locomotive. This deed rendered the bridge impassible for a long period of time, which meant it could not be used for German military transports.

Photograph of sabotage action near De Klomp, Ede, taken on 8 September 1944, WO2-NIOD Image Base.

On 6 September 1944, a resistance group from Ede sabotaged the railway line between Utrecht and Arnhem by loosening the rails. This caused the derailment of a military train from France with 30 carriages carrying soldiers. A French locomotive included in the centre of the train crushed a number of carriages, resulting in the death of 17 soldiers. Another 30 soldiers were wounded. A few days later, several German military officials (on the right) posed with NS employees in front of the wreckage. On that same day an emergency track became available, allowing military transports for the Germans to resume.

Placard in German and Dutch dated 24 September 1944, Resistance Museum Collection.

Just after the railway strike had been called, Reich Commissioner Seyss-Inquart announced that he would hold all Dutch citizens responsible for any sabotage to the railways, waterways, telephone cables or post offices in their municipalities. This meant that the people could expect reprisals, including destruction of their homes and confiscation of their possessions.