(Keulen, 1923)

Member of the 1st Company DNB

Resistance fighter: Combative and active to the utmost

In 1933, the Bier family fled from Germany to the Netherlands. “After the Nazis came to power, they decided not to wait. They left all their possessions behind and came to the Netherlands with their five children. They were taken in here by the De Jong family,” writes Miriam de Jong, whom he later married.

When the Nazis took control of the Netherlands, David went into hiding: “Until December 1942, I moved from place to place because I could only stay anywhere for a short time. At those hiding places, I could only remain indoors … often there were extensive searches. At the end of December 1942, comprehensive searches for Jews were carried out, and I had to hide every day in stables; in case of danger, I hid outside all night, in the fields, in ditches, or in places where the cows stayed. A farmer allowed me to hide in a small storage space in the hayloft above the stable…” David collected his brothers Max and Josef from Amsterdam and arranged hiding places for them in Varsseveld and Dinxperlo. Even when he fell from a loft during an escape and broke his back, David remained combative and was active in the resistance in the east of the Netherlands.

He committed acts of resistance by planting bombs in German army vehicles, smuggling and hiding weapons from air drops, concealing downed Allied pilots, and so forth. During the liberation of the Achterhoek, he joined the Dutch National Battalion within the Canadian Army, which liberated the Netherlands from German occupation.

After mid-July 1945, he left for (what would later become) Israel, where he married Miriam de Jong (1924–1995) in 1950. David Bier passed away in November 1996 in Tel Aviv.

David Bier