The Rademakersbroek Mass Execution
On 2 March 1945, 46 men from across the Netherlands were executed by firing squad at the Rademakersbroek near Varsseveld in the Achterhoek. Their deaths were a reprisal for the killing of four German soldiers by the resistance group ‘De Bark’, which had its headquarters during the last winter of the war in a farmhouse called De Bark, in the hamlet of De Heurne near Dinxperlo. On the night between Sunday 25 and Monday 26 February, four German Fallschirmjäger (elite paratroopers of the Wehrmacht) were found in a half-blown-up, partially burnt-out car near a bomb crater on the Aaltenseweg. Their bodies showed signs of strangulation.
The Rademakersbroek victims were all ‘Todeskandidaten‘ (death row candidates) from De Kruisberg prison in Doetinchem. The youngest was 18, the oldest 65 years old. Among them were leading figures of the resistance from Gelderland and Overijssel. They had only been arrested in the final months of the war but would just miss the liberation: only 4 weeks after their death, Aalten and the surrounding area were liberated. This caused untold suffering to the families they left behind: (pregnant) wives, children, parents, brothers, and sisters. Future generations would also suffer from this trauma.
This is their story:
In the early morning of 2 March, around 4 or 5 o’clock, the men were woken and taken from their cells. The prisoners had heard activity in the corridor for some time and assumed that something was happening again. They had experienced this several times before. They left their cells and their hands were tied behind their backs. Every man had a piece of paper slipped into his coat or trouser pocket, which, as it later turned out, contained his name and date of birth. The group was driven out of the building and forced into a large closed lorry, which guards then sealed. A military column of SD, SS, and Fallschirmjäger left the premises. The last group were soldiers from the same division as the four murdered German servicemen. They formed the firing squad. The journey of the 46 men would ultimately end at 8 o’clock in a field at the Rademakersbroek, next to ‘De Tol’ farm belonging to the Kraaijenbrink family on the Aaltenseweg, near Varsseveld. After the war, farmer Evert Jan would write a detailed account of the event to a sister of victim Luther Kortlang (24 years old) from Ermelo.
With a gentle spring breeze, it was the early morning of a beautiful spring day. The lorry stopped on a dirt track next to De Tol, where the Kraaijenbrink family – with 8 children and a few people in hiding – were just about to have breakfast after finishing their work. The family was ordered to stay inside and took cover in the cellar because English fighter planes were in the sky. The area swarmed with German and also a number of Dutch SS men. There were several military cars and motorbikes and two lorries carrying the firing squad. The prisoners were forced to jump out of the hold at the back of the lorry. An older man – Dionisius Dirk Bakker or Oswald Assmann – did not dare to jump, was hit with a rifle butt, and fell forward onto his knees.
Due to the danger of air raids, the German soldiers stood right next to the farmhouse. Traffic in the area was halted. Farmer Bernard Houwer, who lived near the railway, had to ensure that no one crossed the tracks. He stood about 100 metres away and was convinced that only exercises were taking place. The prisoners were driven onto the wheat field and lined up in a semi-circle, in three rows, diagonally behind each other, with their faces turned away from the farm. The death sentence was read out in German, then translated by a Dutchman. A few men pleaded to be allowed to write a farewell letter. In vain. Then the carbines of the firing squad rang out. With the first volley, the eastern part of the group fell. With the second, the western part. When all the men lay on the ground, a German and a Dutch SS man stepped over the corpses from both sides and delivered a coup de grâce where necessary.
Janny Winkelman from Schiedam – 14 years old at the time – like the parents Kraaijenbrink, witnessed parts of the execution. In the summer of 1943, she stayed with the family for the first time during a school evacuation to recuperate, and every holiday thereafter. During the ‘Hunger Winter’, her school was closed. There was no more coal to heat the building and everyone was unwell due to the lack of food. Thus, Janny arrived at De Tol early on Monday morning, 26 February, on the back of a bicycle belonging to a person in hiding from Rotterdam. On the Aaltenseweg, she saw, by her own account, the partially burnt-out car and the four murdered German soldiers under a blanket 150 metres before the farm. Every night that week, German soldiers conducted house searches to find the perpetrators of the attack. On 2 March, Janny saw from the attic window together with 15-year-old Riek Kraaijenbrink how the men were driven out of a lorry onto the dirt path. While everyone was in the cellar, she went upstairs a few times on an excuse to look through the stable window at the wheat field. The faces of a young man with blonde hair combed back and an old man with a beard stayed with her. When everything had become silent, she saw how the men lay on the ground and were shot.
After the shooting, a portion of the SS men – about 30 men – went to have breakfast at De Tol. Daughter Aaltje had to make porridge. A number of them made cruel jokes about what had happened just moments before. Around 10:30 am, four farmers from the area had to place the bodies on their wagons, and the final journey of the 46 men to a mass grave at Rentinkkamp cemetery in Varsseveld followed. Ben Heusinkveld, who lived on the Burgemeester van der Zandestraat next to the churchyard, saw a flat cart with corpses pass by as a 5-year-old boy. A member of the NSB walked in front. On the empty wheat field, men who were detained on the spot had to collect the abandoned scarves, glasses, caps, and hats. These were buried together with the remains of the victims. Later, farmer Kraaijenbrink would dig up the personal belongings again at the request of family members.
Liberation and Monument
Exactly four weeks later, on Good Friday 30 March, Aalten and the surrounding area were liberated. In April, the bodies of the men were identified where possible and placed in separate coffins. Most were eventually reburied in their home towns, though for some this would take months as the families only heard in the summer that they had died. A number found their final resting place at the Loenen Field of Honour.
Janny Winkelman hitched a ride home in a lorry on 29 June, returning a month later for the harvest. In the place where the men had fallen, the corn stood much higher and was dark green. Farmer Kraaijenbrink harvested these stalks separately, for “no man or animal shall eat from them”. Daughter Riek bound the sheaves. A portion of these grains was placed in the monument that was unveiled at the Rademakersbroek on 4 May 1949. A month later, a large part of the Kraaijenbrink family emigrated to Canada. The father would pass away there in November. Janny kept in touch with the family for the rest of her life. 2 March never disappeared from their thoughts.
As farmer Kraaijenbrink wrote in his letter: “Every day those rows of dead there on our field still stand before my eyes. The wind played with their locks of hair and I wished that the whole of our Dutch people had seen them lying there so that it would not forget what has been sacrificed here for country and for people.”
In his 2014 book ‘Mosquito Down’, pilot Frank Dell, who was hidden in the Somsenhuus next to De Bark, writes extensively about the fatal events that took place in his neighbourhood and at De Bark.
More information: de46vanhetrademakersbroek.nl
