After the war, the Dutch government made great efforts to provide a dignified final resting place for all those who lost their lives as a result of the resistance. This included both people who died in concentration camps and those who were executed as a result of a death sentence.
The Loenen cemetery of honour
After the war, the Dutch government made great efforts to provide a dignified final resting place for all those who lost their lives as a result of the resistance. This included both people who died in concentration camps and those who were executed as a result of a death sentence.
In countless cases, it was difficult to recover the remains, and in some cases, when the person concerned had been cremated in one of the German concentration camps, it was impossible.
In the Netherlands, the bodies of those who had been shot were sometimes cremated in Westerveld. But there were also cases where the victims were buried in mass graves, such as at the execution sites on the Waalsdorpervlakte in Scheveningen and near the Vught concentration camp.
As far as my father was concerned, my mother knew that he had been shot in 1943, but she had never been told what had happened to his body.
After the war, the Identification and Recovery Service was tasked with doing everything possible to locate, identify, recover and bury the remains of the fallen. In consultation with the next of kin, a place for the reburial was determined.
The remains of Jan Dieters and my father were found in a mass grave on the Waalsdorpervlakte.
My father was first reburied in Wassenaar and later at the War Graves Foundation’s Cemetery of Honour in Loenen on the Veluwe. This was a return to the roots of his ancestors, who came from this region.
He lies there next to his comrade in arms, Jan Dieters. At number 486 in section A, under a small white stone, just like all the other war victims who have found their final resting place there.
Louis Jansen Square
Slotermeer is one of the garden cities in Amsterdam West that were built in the 1950s to meet the post-war housing shortage. When construction was completed, some of the streets in that neighbourhood were named after resistance heroes from the 1940s and 1945, an event that took place without much fuss. This is how Louis Jansenplein came into being.
After the war, the resistance and those who had participated in it only came back into the spotlight some thirty to forty years after liberation, thanks to publications in newspapers and magazines. I can no longer trace which organisation or association took the initiative, but in Amsterdam it was decided to reaffirm the tribute from the 1950s with some ceremony.
The families of all those whose names had been used were invited to a festive gathering at the Slotania Hotel. After the gathering, everyone took a walk through the streets in question, where new street signs were unveiled, bearing a short description of the people concerned alongside their names.
And as the photo on the next page shows, flowers were also laid.
About Jan Dieters
Jan Dieters never received the recognition he deserved. Like my father, he disappeared from the public eye in 1950. That is to say, they were no longer mentioned in De Waarheid.
Until, in the spring of 2023, I received two emails from Richard Groothedde.
The text was surprising.
In the second email, he introduced himself as a grandson of Jan Dieters and wrote the following: “As more and more archives are being posted on the internet, I am learning more about my grandfather. I would like to talk to you about him because my family never talked about my grandfather.”
My mother and uncles, the children of Jan Dieters, have since passed away.
This led to a correspondence that revealed the following surprising facts to me.
The marriage between Jan Dieters and Maria Roos ended in divorce in 1938. Maria Roos had caught Jan having an affair with another woman (Dirkje Mandemakers).
She then left her husband for good, taking the children with her.
After the war, Dieters’ wife visited my mother in Scheldestraat a number of times. Once she brought her daughter Dikkie with her. Looking back, I estimate that Dikkie was about the same age as my youngest sister.
I vaguely remember my mother saying that the new partner had a garage business in Deventer or Apeldoorn. To my knowledge, there was no further contact between Maria Roos and my mother.
Richard, who is the son of one of Maria Roos’ daughters, doubts whether the latter (his grandmother) visited my mother after the war. It is quite possible that Jan Dieters’ girlfriend, Dirkje M., introduced herself as his lawful wife.
In the court case against Vosveld = see chapter – Dieters’ wife was called as a witness on a number of occasions. It is unclear whether this was Maria Roos or Dirkje Mademakers.
I do not know whether Richard managed to unravel this problem.
I was unable to answer the question of why Jan Dieters is not mentioned in the resistance neighbourhood in Amsterdam. I hope he has managed to get in touch with the group that gives the resistance heroes a face.
Resistance heroes are given a face
In the spring of 2921, I read a letter to the editor in the PAROOL newspaper mentioning an organisation that has been involved in embellishing street signs for a number of years. ‘Give streets a face’ was the name I saw in the PAROOL. For the streets in Amsterdam West that were named after resistance heroes, I also came across the name ‘give resistance heroes a face’.
The signs, measuring approximately 60 by 90 cm, feature a portrait of the namesake, a brief CV and the activities with which he or she resisted the German occupation of our country.
We found the address and name of the initiators on the internet. City photographer Paul F. was the initiator, and when we contacted him, he told us that they put up a number of these new signs every year. No, it wasn’t Lou Jansenplein’s turn yet, but it was at the top of the waiting list.
I then had a few more contacts with Paul F. about a portrait of my father and the text that would appear on the sign. After that, there was actually a year of silence until I received an email at the beginning of May in which the sender said he had seen that a new sign had been placed on Lou Jansenplein. He had found the website ‘De Wereld van Gajus’ (The World of Gajus) and our address via the internet.
We drove there that same Sunday and half an hour later we walked from a car park to the square. Lou Jansenplein is not really a beautiful square. It is more of a large traffic junction surrounded by blocks of houses. Half hidden behind a tree and a small lawn, we saw a nameplate on the side of a house. Was it him? No doubt about it.
It wasn’t a particularly nice photo of my father looking at me from the sign.
Incidentally, we don’t have any good photos of him. There aren’t any, that is to say, we’ve never been able to find one.
With the exception of some grainy newspaper photos, they were confiscated by the SD after his arrest in 1943.
But it’s nice that he is back in the spotlight on this square. Lou Jansen or Louis Jansen, as his official name is. Both names are mentioned on the square. Almost eighty years later, he has been given a face.
