Gerrit Jan van der Veen

Dutch sculptor, WW2 hero and resistance leader.

During the German occupation of the Netherlands in WW2, he refused to become a member of the Kulturkammer. He went underground and became a leading figure in the Dutch resistance. He set up the De Persoonsbewijzencentrale (PBC), where persecuted people could get a falsified identity cards. To get the blanco identity cards and the for food needed distribution cards, he erected a fighting gang that robbed distribution offices (see events) and state printing offices, as did his Johannes Post.

With Willem Arondeus, he was the master brain of the 27 March 1943 attack on the municipal archive of Amsterdam. There aim was to destroy the the records of some 70.000 Amsterdam Jews, so that the Nazi's could not trace from the archives. The operation partly succeeded, but most of the resistance fighters were caught.

He several times tried to get his captured mates free. In the night of 1/2 May 1944, 28 resistance fighters attacked the prison of Amsterdam. He was shot in a leg, but could escape. On 8 June 1944 he was arrested. He was executed by the Germans on 10 June 1944 in the dunes of Overveen.

Personal

Van der Veen married on 25 November 1931 the artist Louise Adriana van der Chijs (1909-1997). They got two daughters: Louise van der Veen (1933), an artist and Gerda van der Veen (1935-2006), a photographer who married Ed van der Elsken. He also had a son Gerrit Jan Wolffensperger, a politician from an extramarital affair.