… Willem Arondeus (1895 - 1943)

The Disappearance of Willem Arondeus

 

Willem Arondeus was born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands in 1895. An artist and author, Arondeus (a-ron-DAY-us) was commissioned to do a mural for the town hall in Rotterdam in the 1920's and later published a biography of Dutch painter Matthijs Maris. Prior to World war II he lived with Jan, the son of a green grocer, in the Dutch countryside near Apeldoorn. His efforts in the Dutch resistance during the Nazi occupation of Holland earned him a posthumous medal of honor from the Dutch government in 1945.

 

Willem Arondeus During the War

 

In May of 1940 The Netherlands was invaded by Germany. The Nazi's moved quickly to isolate and document the Jewish population. All Jews in The Netherlands were told to register with the occupying forces and were given the disingenuous promise of safety for those who complied. Then, using the registration records, Jews were systematically relocated to the Westerbork transit camp and then on to concentration camps in Auschwitz or Sobibor where approximately 100,000 Dutch Jews were put to death.

 

Arondeus joined the "Raad van Verzet" resistance movement shortly after the invasion. This underground unit specialized in falsifying registration papers thus making it difficult to identify Jews for deportation to concentration camps. The protection of "onderduikers" (people in hiding) was endangered whenever the forged papers were matched against the register of the population. On March 27, 1943, in an effort to protect the identity of those in hiding, Arondeus led an attack on the building where the register was maintained in Amsterdam. Thousands of files were destroyed. Five days after the attack, Arondeus and 11 other members of the unit were arrested. They were all executed in July, 1943.

 

A Hero Forgotten

 

The efforts and courage of such units of the resistance are attested to in works such as The Diary of Anne Frank. Monuments to the resistance commemorate the brave acts of Dutch citizens who participated in the general strike that brought the country to a standstill in reaction to the Nazi's violent attacks on the Jewish community in Amsterdam. Streets are named after the brave leaders of the resistance who gave their lives in defense of others. However, the social attitude towards Gays in post war Europe made recognition of a homosexual such as Arondeus more difficult.

 

After the War...Willem Arondeus Disappears

 

The last request of Willem Arondeus before his execution was that after the war it should be known that "homosexuals are not cowards". For nearly 50 years, his deeds were omitted from the history books. The world that survived the war was not ready to endure a homosexual hero. His story has been given new visibility by the 1990 documentary "After the War, You Have to Tell Everyone..." by Dutch director Toni Boumans.

 

The story of Nazi persecution of homosexuals is part of the Holocaust Memorial Museum that was opened in Washington D.C. in 1993. The Holocaust is most often thought of in terms of the torture and murder of the millions of European Jews that represent the vast majority of its victims. Also targeted by the Nazi campaign were Gypsies, handicapped children, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals. Willem Arondeus is one of 500 people featured on the identity cards that are given to visitors to the museum, providing a personal history of a person who lived during the Holocaust. Over 50,000 people were convicted of homosexuality under German law between 1933 and 1944. As many as 15,000 homosexuals were sent to concentration camps, where more than half died.

 

The Story Continues to Unfold

 

Dr. Klaus Muller, historian at the University of Amsterdam and consultant to the museum, has taken on the difficult task of locating survivors and witnesses of the Nazi persecution of homosexuals. His work is made difficult by the persecution of Gays and Lesbians that continued after the war. The 19th century German law that outlawed homosexuality remained on the books until 1969. It was this law, commonly known as "paragraph 175", that formed the basis for Heinrich Himmler's "special police bureaucracy to combat male homosexuality".

 

Some of the homosexuals that were liberated from concentration camps were sent to prison to complete their sentences. Many more ripped the pink triangles (that identified them as homosexuals) from their clothes and remained silent. For a homosexual to testify to the Nazi persecution or to ask for reparation would be self indicting. With very few exceptions, their stories were never told.

 

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in December 1994, Dr. Muller relates the importance of the lessons of the Holocaust for today.

 

"One thing you clearly learn from Nazi Germany -- from how the whole operation of persecution developed -- is that when one group is excluded from basic human rights, there is a clear tendency to exclude more and more groups for very different reasons....Basic human rights are for all people, or for no one."

 

Learn More About the Persecution of Homosexuals in the Holocaust

 

·         Read the book "Men with the Pink Triangle" by Heinz Heger, Alyson Publications, Boston, Mass., 1980.

·         See the film "We Were Marked With a Big A". Video sold at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Shop.

·         Read the full text of the Willem Arondeus card from the museum, printed in the Congressional Record on April 21, 1993 [citation - E.969].

·         Visit the The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum web site.  

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