{"id":126556,"date":"2021-05-06T11:52:58","date_gmt":"2021-05-06T09:52:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=126556"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:25:36","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:25:36","slug":"upcoming-book-on-rotterdam-students-in-the-resistance-during-wwii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2021\/05\/06\/upcoming-book-on-rotterdam-students-in-the-resistance-during-wwii\/","title":{"rendered":"Upcoming book on Rotterdam students in the resistance during WWII"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author and historian Merel Leeman is writing a book about students in the resistance in Rotterdam during WWII. She hopes to present it in September, the culmination of three years of research into the archives of associations and students. She tells a bit about what she has discovered: \u201cThere is evidence of the students struggling to continue their studies during the war years \u2013 among all the rubble. That contrast grew increasingly grim.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Jaarclub De Keien of the Rotterdamsch Studenten Corps (RSC), they became involved in the resistance. This photo will be on the front page of the book. <\/span><\/p>

\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMerel Leeman \/ Atlas Contact<\/span>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>

For each city with a higher education institute except Rotterdam, a book has already been published about students in the resistance during the war. The five largest Rotterdam student associations, united in the Stichting Rotterdams Studentenverzet 1940-1945 [Rotterdam student resistance foundation], felt that the gap had to be filled. They opened their archives to the author and historian Merel Leeman, who hopes to publish the result with the publisher Atlas Contact in September.<\/p>\n

After three and a half years of archival research, the draft of the book is complete, and in the week of Memorial Day she tells a bit about her findings. \u201cI focused primarily on students who started studying from 1940, the first time looking after themselves and determined to enjoy their freedom. I explored in depth their everyday history and how, over the years, the seriousness of the war gradually affected them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Executed<\/h2>

The book tells the story of Rotterdam students in the resistance based on the fraternity called De Keien of the Rotterdamsch Studenten Corps (RSC). The eight students in the fraternity lived together on the Claes de Vrieselaan and became increasingly involved in the resistance over the years. One well-known resident is Frits Ruys, whom the Germans executed by firing squad on the Kraling shooting range in 1944 for resistance, after being betrayed by a fellow student.<\/p>\n

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Frits Ruys.<\/span><\/p>

\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWikiportret.nl<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>

That house still stands, and Leeman visited it. Today it is occupied by a NRC journalist, who was happy to show her around. \u201cDuring the war, the house on the Claes de Vrieselaan was a student hostel. \u2018Pa and Ma Ried\u00e9\u2019 ran it. The husband was an unemployed captain \u2013 all water transport had been stopped \u2013 so they started a hostel. Slowly but surely the couple became involved in the resistance because of the students, who did not all join the resistance immediately though. Some did, others joined in the last year of the war. It was not a natural step to join the resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n

For her book, Leeman wanted to describe the world the students experienced. She did this by exploring the archives of student associations, published interviews, articles in student magazines, the Niod [Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies] archive, the municipal archive and personal archives. \u201cA son of the fraternity members still had an enormous chest containing correspondence between the students and a logbook of their daily activities. That was invaluable for my research.\u201d<\/p>\n

De Keien fraternity<\/h2>

De Keien<\/em> fraternity serves to provide a framework in the book for the broader resistance of students in Rotterdam studying at the Nederlandse Economische Handelshogeschool (NEH, Netherlands School of Economics, predecessor of Erasmus University, ed.). \u201cIt took a while before Rotterdam had pulled itself together after the bombardment and resistance could start to be organised in the city. In the initial phase, Rotterdam residents had to take care of survival first. Like finding a home with a roof,\u201d explained Leeman.<\/p>\n\n\t

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\n\t\t\u2018Most students tried at first to stubbornly continue on with their lives, just surviving in the war.\u2019\n\t<\/blockquote>\n\n\t<\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n

The NEH had eight hundred students, so it was relatively small and new. Initially, Leeman noted a certain conformity of the higher education institutions in the archives. \u201cThe most important aspect was to continue providing education; they had to build the Netherlands up again after the war. Many companies were involved in the NEH, and a large number collaborated with the Germans. Their idea was: this is the new status quo, in this new world we have to take up a prominent position.\u00a0\u2018Business as usual\u2019\u00a0as motivation.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this environment, the students tried to remain students for the first few years, noted Leeman. \u201cMost students tried at first to stubbornly continue on with their lives, just surviving in the war. You can understand that attitude when you read their notes. How they wished they could keep on studying, partying, organising pub crawls, hazing newcomers \u2013 while the city lay in rubble.\u201d<\/p>\n

Code of honour<\/h2>

But there was also resistance in Rotterdam. \u201cInitially, it came mostly from outside. That is why someone like Frits Ruys with his network played a larger role early in the war: he came from Wassenaar, and The Hague was the centre of Dutch illegal activities at the start of the war. After the bombardment, mainly relief organisations were active in Rotterdam. I saw that some of them developed into resistance networks in later years.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Ruins of the Laurenskerk church in Rotterdam, after the bombardment of the city on 14 May 1940.Rotterdam Municipal Archive<\/span><\/p>

\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGemeentearchief Rotterdam<\/span>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>

And students became involved. \u201cOf the entire student population, the proportion was small, but there were relatively a lot of students in the resistance because they did not have responsibilities like a job or family. I am trying to describe how persisting with normal daily life transformed into resistance at a certain point, which factors played a role in the pivot, how it was to lead a double life within a group of friends to whom they were just normal students. I wanted to understand all that. The answer turned out to be different for each student. But I\u2019m not going to reveal everything yet\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

She could not find the same amount of information for all of the student associations. \u201cStudents from the SSR-R, for example, at that time a Reformed student association, always maintained a strict code of honour of not talking after the war about what you went through during the war. A code of honour that was transgressed by others for many reasons, for example the need for self-justification. This in turn influenced our image of the resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Falsification centre and illegal press<\/h2>

Because of its economic character, Leeman expected Rotterdam students of the Netherlands School of Economics to be primarily active in the National Support Fund (which helped finance illegal activities in the Netherlands, ed.). This was not necessarily true. \u201cThe students could be employed in a range of tasks. They were good at spying, a number of students worked in the falsification centre, and they helped the illegal press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t

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\n\t\t\u201cIn the resistance you had to develop an uncompromising attitude while being in a pragmatic, economically driven environment.\u201d\n\t<\/blockquote>\n\n\t<\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n

She laughed, \u201cWhen the students became involved with the press, they started issuing surveys to the readers about the quality of the articles and what could be improved. It remained a company that they were running, despite everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leeman noted that the students became more bound to the city through the resistance. In Rotterdam \u2013 city of dockworkers \u2013 the students were the crazy outsiders. \u201cBut through the war, it became evident that the students\u2019 world in Rotterdam came into contact with seamen, communists and members of the Dutch Reformed Church. These were all worlds that had remained apart until then.\u201d<\/p>\n

Uncompromising<\/h2>

Another question she wanted to answer was: to what extent did their work in the resistance bring them into conflict with the business sector, which was collaborating to a great extent, and which was training them at NEH. \u201cIn the resistance you had to develop an uncompromising attitude while being in a pragmatic, economically driven environment. And what do you do with those values and attitude after the war? I describe all of that in the book.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t

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De redactie<\/h2>\n\t\t\n\t\t
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