(Rotterdam, 1920)

DNB Staff – Medical Service

Grit and Grace: Trouw Courier and Member of the Interior Forces

Maria (Mies) Bruijnen was born in Rotterdam on 7 January 1920, the daughter of Cornelis Bruijnen and Maria Hoffman. After secondary school, she began studying medicine. She obtained her Bachelor of Medicine in Utrecht in May 1940, around the time the Germans devastated Rotterdam with a major bombardment. Mies did not hesitate for a moment and provided essential medical assistance to many victims. In the summer of 1942, she distributed the underground paper Vrij Nederland, but later, at the instigation of the leadership, she committed herself fully to the Trouw resistance group.

During the war, she was one of the central figures of Trouw. She was a resistance woman on a broad front and was always on the move. Together with her friend Nel Spits, she organised a distribution network for Trouw in Limburg, sometimes collecting the newspapers herself from Markelo in Overijssel. In early 1944, she shifted her field of operations to the Achterhoek. Her fiancé was Jan Penning (Deventer 21.09.1917 – Vught 10.08.1944), also a prominent member of the Trouw group. He was in charge of the distribution of Trouw in the Achterhoek and Overijssel. They organised everything surrounding the printing and distribution of Trouw in the eastern Netherlands. On their journeys from Enschede to Utrecht, they regularly stopped at the rectory of Reverend Broek Roelofs in Geesteren.

In January 1944, Penning was forced into hiding. At the end of June 1944, he was arrested in Epse near Deventer, imprisoned in Haaren, and after two months executed by firing squad at Kamp Vught, along with 22 other resistance comrades from Trouw. Mies Bruijnen then went into hiding on Zwilbroekseweg in Eibergen with the parents of Johan Smits. Johan Smits himself had worked until then as a typographer at the Heinen printing works in Eibergen, where illegal pamphlets and Trouw were printed. The printing business was closed following the execution of Henk Heinen and the arrest of his father and brother. Johan Smits was involved in the distribution of Trouw in the East Achterhoek and was now hidden on a farm in Rekken.

In September 1944, Mies Bruijnen joined the Eibergen section of the Interior Forces (Binnenlandse Strijdkrachten, BS), where she met Albertus Klaas (Ab) ten Bruggencate, a man in hiding and also a member of the BS combat unit. He was born in 1920 in Broek op Langedijk, had studied radio telegraphy, and previously worked as a physical education teacher at the ‘Rekkense Inrichtingen’ in Eibergen. On the grounds of this institution and in the vicinity, many people were hidden. Mies Bruijnen was involved as a courier for the Lichtenvoorde ‘pilot line’. Immediately after the liberation of Eibergen, both Mies and Ab joined the Dutch National Battalion (DNB). Mies served with the staff and medical service of this force, and Ab was a member of the 3rd Company.

Mies Bruijnen and Ab ten Bruggencate married on 18 April 1946 in De Bilt. After the war, she remained active in organisations for former resistance members. In 1955, Mies resumed her medical studies. After graduating, she became a school doctor in Rotterdam. In 1973, the couple moved to Maasdam in the Hoekse Waard. Ab ten Bruggencate passed away on 4 August 1994, and Mies Bruijnen on 24 January 2002.

Mies Bruijnen