Pim Boellaard

Dutch entrepreneur, soldier, politician and resistance man.

Boellaard was a member of the Boellaard family and a son of Willem Hendrik Cornelius Boellaard (1866-1951), officer, last lieutenant general titular and deputy governor of the residence, and Margaretha Antoinette Römer (1879-1973). He married in 1929 Anna Louisa baroness van Heeckeren (1907-1991), art painter; they had a son whose wife, Maria Julie Boellaard-Stheeman (25 July 1937, Amsterdam), was the lady-in-waiting of Queen Beatrix. Boellaard himself became lifelong befrienderd with her father Prince Bernhard after WW2.

Boellaard came from a family whose male members had been general since 1790, but chose a career with an insurance company, after he had completed his studies at the Nederlandsche Handels-Hoogeschool, the later Erasmus University of Rotterdam. In his study years, Boellaard was a member of the Rotterdam Student Corps.

In 1939 he was mobilised as a reserve captain at the artillery. At the German invasion in 1940 he was involved in the counterattack against the Germans who had taken the airfield Ockenburg. After the capitulation of the Dutch armed forces on 15 May 1940, Boellaard became regional commander of the order service in the Utrecht region. The order service was a resistance organisation of reserve officers of the Dutch army.

In May 1942 Boellaard was arrested and ended up in the Scheveningen prison (Oranjehotel). Although he was questioned on 11 May, he did not talk. He was sentenced to death anyway.

When Boellaard was removed from his cell on 14 May, he thought his last hour had been beaten. However, he was cut and shaved and then taken to the Clingendael estate. Han Jordaan underwent the same treatment. At Clingendael there was an extensive interview with Himmler, who was briefly in The Hague to discuss with the Nazi top the latest details of the journeys of Jews to the extermination camps.