Assen van Derk & Berendina (Grolleman)

Assen van, Derk Derk and Berendina (known as Berendje) van Assen were very sociable people. Derk had been active in the illegal underground from the beginning of the war, initially without actually being a member of any organized resistance group. The van Assens had people hidden in their home, British airmen and Jews, even before the term “onderduikers” was coined. Derk was well known in Maastricht, Limburg, where he served as president of the Protestant-Christian tax officials union. During the war he was a member of the Versleyen group, a group of professional tax officials within the larger LO, as well as being a member of the Trouw*, the Christian national resistance organization. Derk had excellent contacts in Maastricht, where he collaborated closely with the Roman Catholic group headed by L.J. Roumen and with fellow protestant A.H. van Mansum*. He was motivated by Christian principles, which put great value on each individual in the eyes of God, and by a sense of patriotism. He was also a humanist who saw all people as equal and was prepared to risk everything to save the lives of Jews and others. Using his many talents Derk contributed during the war to illegal newspapers, organized national information networks and offered professional document forgers a place to work in his home. Derk and Berendje were friendly with Isidore and Frederika Schaap, who had come to Maastricht in 1939. Isidore headed a branch of a commercial firm that was based in Rotterdam and Berendje was one of his customers. The Schaaps had one teenage daughter named Hetty. The Schaaps were Jewish but they were very assimilated and sometimes attended the local Dutch Reformed Church with the van Assens on Sunday mornings. In the summer of 1942, the Schaaps were ordered to report for deportation and Derk helped them find a place to hide. They spent their first couple of nights hiding with a family who owned an optician’s shop in Maastricht. During this time their identity cards werealtered and the “J” removed, thereby allowing them the freedom to travel with less risk. The following day, the Schaaps took a train to Utrecht, to the home of one of Derk’s cousins. They soon moved to a family in Hillegom, South Holland, also relations of the van Assens. The Schaap family was then forced to split up and Isidore and Frederika moved to Amsterdam, where they were later arrested. The couple perished in Auschwitz. In the meantime, Hetty, after moving around between Hillegom and Diemen (where she stayed with relatives of the van Assens who had to let her go after her parents were arrested), was taken to Apeldoorn, Gelderland. In Apeldoorn she found shelter from October 1942 until December 1943, when it was no longer safe to be hiding with anyone connected with Derk van Assen. Hetty then moved down the street to the home of the Reverend Visser. At this address, she was equipped with a false identity card that enabled her to move about freely for the remainder of the war. On July 26, 1943, Derk was arrested in Maastricht after having been shadowed for some time by the SD, who had induced a resistance activist, nicknamed Blonde Mien, to work for them. Mien was employed to gather information about Derk’s contacts, but before she could do so Derk was apprehended and incarcerated in the local prison. In this prison, Oberscharfuehrer Richard Nitsch interrogated Derk for seven weeks, during which time Derk’s colleagues were planning his escape. However, the authorities discovered the plot and to abort it Nitsch and two other SD men executed Derk in Horst, Limburg, on September 13, 1943. In the meantime, Berendje had also been arrested and imprisoned, initially in Maastricht, then in Haaren, and finally in Vught, from where she was deported to the Ravensbrück camp in Germany, where she died on February 2, 1945. Throughout the war, Derk and Berendje had acted daringly and in disregard of their own safety. After the war, Derk and Berendje were honored by the AirChief Marshal and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force for “the help given to sailors, soldiers, and airmen of the British Commonwealth of Nations, which enabled them to escape from or evade capture by the enemy.” On September 6, 1989, Yad Vashem recognized Derk van Assen as Righteous Among the Nations