The fallen resistance people in Limburg

Gerrit Holla
(Gerardus Hubertus)

Cammaert wrote about Gerrit Holla: Roermond, pub owner. Affiliated with N.S.B. and Landwacht. He was feared and hated because he made many victims among resistance people and (Jewish) people in hiding. [1.1]

Holla was the alcoholic landlord of pub De Tump in Roermond, where almost exclusively his kindred spirits filled up. For he was a fanatical supporter of National Socialism and, in the last year of the war, leader of Roermond’s Auxiliary Landwacht, i.e. the first man of a kind of reserve police in his hometown. [2]
Before that, he and his land guards worked with the Arbeitskontrolldienst (AKD) and other police corpses.
He is not to be confused with the resistance fighter Harry Holla from Venlo.

Now follows a list of some events in which he played a more or less important role. They all appear in Chapter 6 of Het verborgen front. [1.2]

• More than from the side of Schmitz, whose role remained shrouded in mists, danger threatened from the side of the local A.K.D. command and from G.H. Holla’s Auxiliary Land Guard. Between November 8, 1943 and August 30, 1944, these two groups arrested nearly one hundred persons, most of whom were put on transport to Amersfoort. Holla provided information from time to time. Probably based on one of his hints, the Sipo arrested the L.O. member P.A.J. Janssens and a person in hiding from Rotterdam in June 1944. The latter’s fate is not certain; Janssens died in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on January 6, 1945. [1.2, p.617]
• On the basis of the statements Nitsch and Schut had whipped up in Vught from the L.O. leaders and other detainees arrested in Weert on June 21, supplemented by anonymous tips and information from Holla and others, the Sipo-Maastricht undertook a large-scale action in Roermond on August 10, 1944. That day not only secretary Moonen was arrested, this fate also befell W.R.H. Smeets and his wife J.H. Smeets-Hendrikx, operators of hotel “Het Gouden Kruis” on Kapellerlaan. [1.2, p.620]
• On July 29, 1944, the Sipo-Maastricht, accompanied by G. Holla and police officers A. Roselle and G. Verheesen, held a raid. Eight persons were arrested and two were evicted from their homes. With brute force and intensive interrogations, the Sipo hoped to learn more about local resistance. Neither the house searches nor the interrogations yielded anything. Most of those arrested were released after some time. Two persons were still detained in Maastricht in early September. They were freed during the raid on the prison of Maastricht. A third detainee, 51-year-old Jacob van Laar, had died of heart failure in the same prison on August 8. [1.2, p.623]
• Through the mediation of Conrad Raab, a gin manufacturer from Herkenbosch, twenty-four citizens of Roermond found shelter at the farm “Lindenhof” in the Meinweg nature reserve during December. This was leaked out. On January 11, 1945, the Sipo from the German border town of Dahlheim, assisted by Holla, surrounded the farm. After interrogation, the Roermonders were sent to a labor camp in Wassenberg. Via various camps and the Cologne prison, they finally ended up in a camp near Hunswinkel. The detainees underwent extraordinarily harsh treatment. At least nine of them died as a result of the maltreatment and hardships. [1.2, p.632]
• The text below mentions Russians. Today we would call them Soviet citizens. They were prisoners of war and forced laborers. They were treated much worse than those from other countries because they were seen as Untermenschen. Especially when they had an Asian appearance.
  In early November 1944, five hundred Russians were taken via Dahlheim to the monastery of the Franciscan Friars St. Ludwig in Vlodrop to build tank walls and trenches. Driven by hunger and cold, seven Russian women returned to Dahlheim to search for food and clothing. They found some full preserving glasses which they took with them. However, the Gestapo from Dahlheim tracked down the Russian women. In the presence of G. Holla and Gestapo chief H. Schmidt, the Russians were taken from the convent around Nov. 20 and shot at the Dahlheim cemetery. [1.2, p.633]
• Leo Moonen, the aforementioned secretary of the bishop in Roermond, was spiritual advisor to the LO/LKP. Uncle Leo always had to be consulted first, when the liquidation of someone was considered. Among other things, he prevented several times the liquidation of Gerrit Holla, a pub owner and notorious Landwachter from Roermond. After the war, Holla, who was a member of both the NSB and the Germanic SS, was held responsible for at least sixty arrests, many of whom did not survive the war. Leo Moonen would also be betrayed by the same Gerrit Holla in August 1944.

In his trial after the war … it briefly came up that Holla had lost a brother - who was in the resistance and did not return from the concentration camp. [2]
Gerrit Holla was initially sentenced to life imprisonment, which after cassation was commuted to a sentence of eighteen years. [3]

Footnotes

1. 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, De Landelijke Organisatie voor hulp aan onderduikers
2. historischnieuwsblad.nl: Ad van Liempt Opsporingsdiensten joegen straalbezopen op het verzet
3. muizenest.nl Leo Moonen