Jan Campert

Dutch journalist, poet, writer and resistance member in Word War 2.

Campert was the son of Petrus Remco Campert (b. 15 June 1874, Leiden - 8 October 1921, West Kapelle), a family doctor in Spijkenisse and Johanna Maria Anna van Hall (b. 1871). He followed the Higher Civic School (HBS) in Vlissingen (1915-1918) and the two year school for Trade and Commerce. From 1919 to 1926 he worked for an commercial bank, but in 1926 he changed to journalism working for local newspapers around Den Haag. In the twenties he also started to publish poetry, and in the thirties fiction. He co-authored detectives.

During the second world war he was active in the Dutch resistance, both in words (remarkable war poetry) and in deeds. He smuggled around 20 Jews via Belgium to the Vichy route, but he was caught on 21 July 1942 near Baarle-Nassau when smuggling the 21 year old Jew Frans van Raalte to Belgium. Both of them and his companion Martien Nijkamp were taken prison. Van Raalte committed suicide the same day. Campert was send successively to the prison of Breda, concentration camps in Haaren, Amersfoort, Buchenwald/Dachau and at last (nov-jan 1943) to Neuengamme.

According to the official Neuengamme concentration camp record he died 12 January 1943 13h30 in Neuengamme as a result of pleurisy. Other sources (Gerrit Kleinveld citing Jan van Bork in the NRC of 19 Febr 2005) stated that he was murdered by Dutch prisoners, because they accused him of betrayal of others in exchange for a better personal treatment. An investigation of the city of Den Haag refuted this accusation and concluded that the cause of death was tuberculosis that in turn was the result of the bad treatment and malnourishment in the German concentration camps.

His most famous and after the war by the Dutch people iconified Song of the Eighteen Dead was first published in the illegal paper Vrij Nederland.