ESCAPING THE NAZIS | The "Engelandvaarders"

De Knipoog ("The Wink of
an Eye") by Mily Weisglas.

Apr 23, 2017 — The Resistance Museum (Verzetsmuseum) in Amsterdam had a meeting on April 19 about the Engelandvaarders (literally, “England sailers”).

I heard about it from my second cousin Charles Boissevain of Leidschendam. After the Nazis invaded Holland in May 1940, they sealed the borders of the Netherlands with land patrols on the German and Belgian borders, bunkers on the shoreline, and marine patrols of the North Sea. 

About 1,700 Engelandvaarders made it to England. The most dramatic escapes were by boat, but the majority of escapees, says Charles, traveled via Switzerland or Spain; some even escaped via Sweden. Of these escapees, the great majority, nearly 1,400 people (mostly men), went on to serve in the Allied armed forces or the Dutch government in exile.

For their Engelandvaart, many were awarded the Dutch Bronze Cross (BK) or Cross of Merit (KV) for bravery. The BK was usually for those who crossed the North Sea, which was more challenging; it is the third-highest Dutch decoration for bravery. The KV was usually for those who went by land via Sweden, Switzerland or Spain; it is the fourth-highest decoration for bravery.

An Engelandvaarders Museum has recently been created in a WW2 bunker in Noordwijk, the thin strip of high-priced coastal land on the North Sea just west of Lisse, where my mother's father was born and where tulips are on display at the Keukenhof. Noordijk is also the resting place of Saint Jerome and Maria Montessori, and where lived such other notables as Thomas Mann, Sigmund Freud and entrepreneur Alfred “Freddy” Heineken. 

The principal founders of the Engelandvaarders Museum were Eddy Jonker, who crossed the North Sea in 1943 and became an RAF pilot, and historian Jos Teunissen, Board member of Erfgoed Leidschendam. A key partner in this effort was Pauline van Till, with whom Charles Boissevain has spoken several times. (Apr 24, 2017: Pauline has written to me to say that Eddy Jonker, now 96, still comes to the Museum every few weeks. Jos Teunissen and Pauline are involved in the museum in some way every day, in person or by phone. Open now for 19 months, the Museum has welcomed more than 10,000 visitors.)

Sierk Plantinga spoke first at the Verzetsmuseum, about how the Engelandvaarders escaped and the many and dangerous problems they had. He also spoke about how often things went wrong and the would-be escapees were captured, which usually meant immediate execution or delayed execution via deportation to the death camps.

The people who escaped included many Jewish refugees from the Nazis, but also Resistance workers who had been unmasked and were being hunted down, or pilots from the Allied Air Forces who survived their crash landings. Charles Boissevain noted that his father Robert Lucas “Bob” Boissevain (1895-1945) very likely was involved in these escapes, although he told his family nothing, to protect them, and did not survive the war to tell his tale.

Mily Kaufmann Weisglas (1923-) told the group how many problems there were for those who tried to escape Holland. 

She described how she and her parents and brother planned their escape. She was helped by a young man, Max Weisglas, with whom she was a student at the Amsterdams Lyceum. 

Another classmate of hers was our cousin Charles, son of Menso Boissevain (brother of Bob, father of Charles from Leidschendam).  This Charles escaped during the war to Switzerland and then to London. (I knew well Menso's daughter Sacha, who died on Valentine's Day in 2009. Sacha headed the KLM flight attendants' union and upon retirement received a lifetime ticket to travel on KLM on a space-available basis. She used this ticket to visit the Marlin family frequently in Montreal, Washington, D.C. and then Berkhamsted, England).

Sadly, Mily's father was caught by a traitor at the Swiss border and she never saw him again. Mily in 2015 at age 92 published a book (in Dutch) about her escape from Holland that Charles says he has read and found very interesting. It is titled Knipoog ("Wink of an Eye") because once, as an attractive 19-year old girl, she gave a wink of her eye to a German soldier, who then turned his back to her to allow her to escape. 

She married Max Weisglas and their son Frans, born August 8, 1946, later became Chairman of the Dutch House of Representatives (Voorzitter van de Tweede Kamer).

Hans Nieuwenhuijzen was also at the Verzetsmuseum meeting. Like Charles (and my eldest sister Olga), he was born in 1934. His father was in the Resistance together with Walraven "Wally" van Hall, about whom a Dutch film is being made. Wally and his brother Gijs robbed the Dutch National Bank for an enormous amount of money without being discovered and caught, perhaps the largest bank robbery in history. One way they did it was to print up counterfeit money, substitute it for bills in the bank vault, and take out real money for distribution to Resistance workers and onderduikers (literally "under-duckers" or "under-divers") such as Jewish refugees.

Wally and the father of Hans and others were caught in January 1945 and they were shot on February 12. They are buried at the Honorary Cemetery (Eerebegraafplaats) in Overveen/Bloemendaal. Charles and I visited the graves together in 2015.

Hans knew Charles Boissevain’s uncle Jan “Canada” Boissevain and his aunt Mies and their five children were living at Corellistraat 6, base of the deadly CS6 armed-Resistance unit. He knew how their sons Janka and Gi (caught working for CS6 on Oct 1, 1943 and shot by the Nazis) tried to escape to England on a home-made boat in the summer of 1940. At the Waddensea, just west of Friesland, they were caught by the Germans. Fortunately, a relative,  (his mother was a Boissevain) uncle Tom de Booy, worked for the Dutch Boat Rescue Society at the place where Janka and Gi arrived as prisoners. Uncle Tom told the Germans, laughing loudly, that this was just a students' joke, that the boys had a bet that they could reach one of the Wadden islands on their home-made boat. Now they had lost the bet, and would have to pay for a lot of beer for their friends. The Germans saw this was plausible and they let Janka and Gi free.

Caubo and Yad Vashem. Charles also met two friends (one of them 88, living now in Utah) with whom he had tried to convince the Yad Vashem Authorities in Israel to give a Yad Vashem Award to several people who  deserved it. Some did receive the award from the Israeli ambassador. But the award has been refused to Jean Caubo. 

Caubo met trains in Paris from Holland. With his help some 800 Jewish refugees and others hunted by the Nazis escaped to Switzerland or Spain, until Caubo himself was betrayed and died at the hands of the Nazis. 

Charles believes that Caubo’s failure to receive a Yad Vashem award is an injustice. Caubo has been honored posthumously by the French, the British, the American and the Dutch governments, but not by Yad Vashem, despite support from many rabbis, in Holland and Israel, and many political and diplomatic leaders.

Charles is persistent. He managed to get a war monument built in his home town of Leidschendam. He originally proposed this on May 3, 1999 to the Leidschendam Community Council, the Gemeenteraad. The Council rejected the proposal unanimously, but eventually Charles prevailed and it was built. More than 500 names of Jewish victims, Resistance heroes, soldiers and others are on the monument, and every year on May 4 a memorial ceremony is held there.

Charles Boissevain says he spends his time with his three "adorable" granddaughters — 5, 3 and almost 2 — and goes to concerts, this being a tradition going back at least to our mutual great-grandfather Charles of the Handelsblad, who campaigned for the creation of the Concertgebouw and whose son and son-in-law are recognized on the wall of the Concertgebouw as directors. 

Charles swims in the North Sea, which in March is still cold, 8°C (46°F). The icy water would not have dissuaded him from swimming to England; what did it was Britain voting for Brexit, he says.

BOISSEVAIN | Reunion 1992, Manitoba-Aug. 21-22 (Updated July 9, 2016)

Al Boissevain (L), grandson of Charles Handelsblad
Boissevain, a fellow Charlestje (Orange) at the 1992
Reunion. Tice Boissevain is at right. They were among
 the few survivors of Gen8; my mother was another.
Tice died in 1998, my mother in 2006. Photo by JT Marlin.

Attendance at the reunion, by name and family group. Note that everyone at the reunion was
a descendant of 1223.

The late Tice (for Matthijs, or Thijs) Boissevain was the key organizer of the 1992 Boissevain Reunion, which was held in Boissevain, Manitoba, Canada.

Next year will be its 25th anniversary.

The town of Boissevain is named after Adolphe Boissevain, who was a railroad financier and member of the Board of Directors of a railway line that created the town by adding a spur on the trans-Canada railway line.

The 1992 attendance list is shown below.

Photos were taken of the five reunion subgroups, in front of a billboard honoring Adolphe Boissevain and his creation of the town.


To Adolphe's left is a man in a cap named Musgrave. He worked for the railway and met the first train in 1885 and the last one in 1958.

Tice used the Henry System of genealogical numbering. Everyone's number began with 122-3. Then colors were assigned as follows based on the 5th and 6th numbers:
15-Jantjes-Yellows (seven attending, including Tice). Jan was the fifth child of Gedeon Jeremie Boissevain.
16-Charlestjes-Oranges (three listed, two attending, Al Boissevain and I). Charles was the sixth child of Gedeon Jeremie.
68-Descendants of Adolphe Boissevain - Purples (two attending)
96-Blues (six attending).
99-Greens (35 attending, two-thirds of the group).

15–Jantjes (Yellow)

The 1 refers to Gedeon Jeremie and the 5 to Jan Boissevain.

Jantjes. Matthijs (Tice) is third from the left and Romelia (Rommie) his daughter is at far right.

Conference Badge and
Postcard of the Town of Boissevain.

16–Charlestjes (Orange)

The badge at right shows that I am an Orange, because numbers 5 and 6 are 16.

It also shows I am in Gen9, because there are nine numbers. I am the fifth child of Hilda van Stockum, whose number is 122-316-61, Gen8. She was the eldest child of Olga Boissevain, whose number is 122-316-6, Gen7. 

Olga was the sixth child of Charles Handelsblad Boissevain, born 1842, who was 122-316, Gen6, founder of the Oranges. Charles was the sixth child of Gideon Jeremie Boissevain, 122-31, Gen5. (Gideon Jeremie was the eldest of the children in his family, so he is a 1 in Gen4.)

A complete list of descendants for the first six generations is available here.

Al Boissevain with 1937 portrait of him by Hilda van Stockum, my
mother. Photo by JT Marlin.

The only other member of the group besides me was Al Boissevain.

He brought with him to show me a portrait of him by my mother in 1937. 

She also offered to do a portrait of Al's brother Fergus but their mother Anne Deterling (Robert's second wife) Boissevain preferred a portrait be done of their cat, as I remember the story.

Al Boissevain in 1992 was operating vineyards in California. He subsequently moved to Indiana to be near his daughter.

Purples, descendants of Adolphe
Boissevain: Tom Lesser and
Kathleen Kritta.

68–Purples


At right are the Purples (68), descendants of Adolphe Boissevain – Tom Lesser and Kathleen Kritta of St. Paul, Minn.

96–Blues.


The six Blues are all from Ridgeway, Ont.

99–Greens

The photo at left is of the Greens, who constituted 35 of the 53 registered participants in the reunion.

The Greens, who were the majority of those who
attended the 1992 Reunion. Photo by JT Marlin.

Half of the Greens (18) are from Alberta–especially Calgary and Edmonton.

The other big contingent is from Austin, Tex.

Other Boissevain Family Reunions:
1989 2006 2011 2016

BOISSEVAINS USA | 3A. Emigrés, 1880-1933 (Updated June 12, 2016)

Van Hinte's book was published
in Holland in 1928. The translation
into English in 1985 took a Dutch
team 7 years.

The way that the Boissevain family worked together may be seen in the movement of Dutch people to the United States, especially starting in the 1880s.

To help us understand what was behind this movement, a handy book is available.

Why Dutch People Looked to the USA

Jacob Van Hinte took a six-week summer trip to the United States in 1921. He sailed at 32 on the S.S. Rotterdam IV, under the flag of the Holland-America Line. (The ship broke apart on Oct. 12, 1883 and was scrapped.)

As many people do when they go to a new country, Van Hinte kept a detailed diary. As few people do, however, Van Hinte expanded his observations during the next seven years into a  chronicle (in Dutch) that overflowed into 1,000 pages in two volumes.

He visited East Coast Dutch "colonies" such as Paterson, N.J. and thriving Dutch settlements in the Upper Midwest and Plains states. Van Hinte visited with first and second generation colonists and studied primary sources.

The biggest success story he found was the pioneering initiative of Dr. Albertus Van Raalte in founding Holland, Michigan. Van Hinte seems to have spent the rest of his life writing and teaching from his 1921 trip. He examined failures as well as successes in Dutch ventures in the USA.

His book was translated into English as Netherlanders in America six decades after it was first written. It took as long to translate as to write.

Visiting Boissevains 

Van Hinte describes the joint efforts of two Boissevains to bring Dutch money and people to America:

• Adolphe Boissevain, leader of Boissevain & Co., in 1880 started to urge Dutch people to settle in Virginia and invest in the financing of railways and other U.S. projects such as farm exports. He was made director of a railway and the towns of Boissevain, West Virginia and Boissevain, Manitoba were named after him. The railways were a big success but the effort to settle more Dutch people in Virginia was not. The British presence, after all, was deeply entrenched in Virginia.
• Charles Boissevain (Gen6, 1842-1927, editor and publisher of the Algemeen Handelsblad in Amsterdam), traveled to the United States in 1882 and wrote back to his newspaper about opportunities he saw in the United States. He seems to have been heavily influenced by the views of Adolphe Boissevain in picking out promising areas for investment and settlement. (Is this the first instance of what we might call today native advertising?) Nothing much seems to have come of his suggestions for good spots for Dutch people to settle (Norfolk, anyone?) in Virginia.

Van Raalte.

Van Hinte's book was originally published in Dutch in 1928. That year  happens to have been the peak year for trying to lure anyone to the United States. It was a harder sell the following year and by the time the United States was fully recovered from the Depression in 1940, Holland was at the beginning of five years of occupation by the Nazis.

That explains why an English translation of the book did not appear until 1985. Another explanation is that the translation, loosely supervised by the Chief Translator, Adriaan de Wit, took seven years to complete. It was eventually published in 1985 by Baker Book House Company in Grand Rapids, Mich. and sold for $40.

In his book, Van Hinte describes what Van Raalte and the Boissevains were seeking to do as "colonization". It seems an odd use of the word, given that Holland was fully cognizant of what real colonies were–in the Dutch West Indies and East Indies and (before Rhodes) South Africa. The word "settlement" might have been a safer word, but some of the English phrases in Van Hinte's book are "quaint". Assuming that "colonization" is what Van Hinte meant, here are three threads that might help provide context:

1. In South Africa, Rhodes was crowding out Dutch investments. The First Boer War in South Africa started in 1880. Cecil Rhodes had begun to Anglicize some Dutch assets. The De Beers Company, which Rhodes founded, was derived from property of two farming brothers of Dutch origin–Diederik Arnoldus De Beer (1825-1878) and Johannes Nicolaas De Beer (1830-1883). They owned a farm called Vooruitzicht in the Orange Free State (near Zandfontein). Diamonds were discovered on their farm. Not being able to defend their land against diamond poachers, they sold it in 1871 to Alfred Johnson Ebden (1820-1908) for a paltry £6,600. The farm became the site of both the Kimberley and the De Beer Mines. Rhodes's company took the farmers' family name even though the original owners of the land did not share in the riches that flowed from it. Dutch traders must have despaired of getting a fair deal from Rhodes's African empire. As they looked elsewhere and the United States must have been an attractive lure.

2. The Mormons showed a new way to colonize. Followers of Brigham Young showed how a religious community could take over an entire territory without firing a shot, just through numbers. Where the Catholic Church built parallel educational institutions, Mormons followed Brigham Young to what became the Utah Territory and then the State of Utah and filled the schools with Mormon students and teachers. Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement of Restorationist Christianity, began with Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. They migrated for the same reason that dissenters left England under Charles I.

3. With the end of the U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction, America was open for business. Washington, D.C. established itself as the government of the United States with the Union victory in 1865. Another war of secession was unlikely. With the shaky Reconstruction period over, It seemed a good time for Dutch investors to look at the country as a place to put their money and even live. Having stayed out of the risky Civil War (compared with Britain, which did not), Holland was more comfortable addressing the American need for people to finance harvesting and agricultural trade. The building of railroads, ports and other infrastructure required investments and agents of capitalism. Dutch entrepreneurs and financiers saw opportunity knocking.

Later Boissevain Arrivals

I have written elsewhere about the migration of other Boissevains to New York City in the late 19th century and early 20th century:

• Gideon Louis Boissevain (1870-1924) and his sons Meinhart and John. Gideon Louis emigrated to the United States and married Helen Arabella Magee. He became a director of the Knickerbocker Trust, living in due course at 993 Park Avenue. They had two sons, Meinhart Boissevain (1896-1928) and John Magee Boissevain (b. 1901, died, probably in Nice, France; no date on record, NP 100).
• Olga (my grandmother), Robert, Jan, Eugen Boissevain, children of Charles Handelsblad Boissevain. Their migration was complete by 1933, when Olga's son-in-law E. R. Marlin moved to Washington, D.C. to work for FDR and Olga joined him and her daughter Hilda. Eugen and Olga died the same year, 1949. Jan and his wife Charlotte Ives retired to the Cap d'Antibes near Nice; I met Charlotte in 1959.

This is not a complete list. There is more to come.

Sources

Van Hinte, Jacob, Netherlanders in America: A Study of Emigration and Settlement in the 19th and 20th Centuries in the United States of America (2 vols., 1,000 pages). Groningen, Netherlands: P. Noordhoff, 1928.

See also sources at links for "Later Boissevain Arrivals".

This blog is sponsored by Boissevain Books, which keeps in print books by Hilda van Stockum, daughter of Olga Boissevain, and publishes new books. To buy a book and support keeping this work alive, go to www.boissevainbooks.com. To suggest a new book, write to john@boissevainbooks.com.