The fallen resistance people in Limburg

Giel Bensen
(Guillaume Hubert)

The birth and death dates were found on geni.com. [1]
Photo on ouweleem.nl [2]

Giel Bensen was an inspector of the private police in the Oranje Nassau coal mines. He was a brother-in-law of Antje Bensen-Offermans. [2]
Cammaert writes: At first he was involved in the production and distribution of underground newspapers, in acts of sabotage and in helping Allied refugees. At the end of 1943, he was one of the founders of the combat group K.P. in Heerlen. He was wounded during the liberation of a prisoner from the hospital (April 1944) and left Heerlen. [3.1]
This prisoner was the courier Theo Crijns. He knew too much and it was feared that the Maastricht security police would use torture to make him talk. He had been injured during his arrest and the surgeon and hospital director Karel van Berckel, also a member of the KP Heerlen, bandaged him so that he could no longer speak and declared that he could not be transported.
Normally, KP members were only active outside their own territory. This was done to avoid being recognized. When a KP from Roermond found itself unable to free a courier from Heerlen, 19-year-old Theo Crijns, from the Sint Jozef hospital, Bensen and his men took on this task. Bensen and Jacques Crasborn entered the hospital armed. [2]
Two policemen, Koevoets and Vervoort, were guarding the door to Crijns’ room, when Giel Bensen and Jacques Crasborn appeared. One of the policemen recognized Bensen.
A bullet from Koevoet’s pistol struck Bensen in the left arm. Crasborn shot to his comrade’s aid and a gunfight ensued, in which Crasborn wounded Koevoets very seriously and Vervoort slightly. The two K.P. men fled over a balcony. Bensen suffered so much from his wound that he had to stay behind in the basement of the hospital. The next day he was transported by stretcher to a hiding address in Heerlen. Two weeks later he left with Th. Dobbe for Nijmegen. He did not return to Heerlen until liberation. [3.2]
In the turmoil, Theo Crijns fled in the nude via the Aambos to the basement of Bernardinus College. [2]
He survived the war.
Following this escape, members of the Bensen and Crijns families were arrested, interrogated and transferred to the Amersfoort and Vught camps. They would survive the war. [4]
The surgeon Karel van Berckel was not so lucky. On August 24, he was arrested for the second time and murdered a few days later in Vught.

Footnotes

1. geni.com Guillaume Hubert (Giel) Bensen
2. ouweleem.nl, Heerlense verhalen Oorlog
3. Cammaert, A. P. M. (1994). Het verborgen front: Geschiedenis van de georganiseerde illegaliteit in de provincie Limburg tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.
   1. Hoofdst. 0, pp.18ff: Introductie van vaak genoemde personen
   2. Hoofdst. 6, p.663
4. Het Land van Herle - 2013 Constant Joseph Ernest Cornips (1895-1944), een man die zijn leven opofferde voor ’God en Vaderland’ pp.96 ff.