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Limburg 1940-1945,
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The fallen resistance people in Limburg
Thijs Oljans was an office worker. [1#4]
His biography on the website wo2slachtoffers.nl/ reads: Lived in Roermond, Schoolpad 2. Son of Jan Oljans and Annechien Kuik. Unmarried. Office worker. Thijs and his brother Wicher had hidden in the attic of their parents’ house in time for a raid about a week before Christmas 1944. However, their brother Jan and Louis Uphus, who was engaged to a sister of the Oljans brothers, were caught and gathered with several others outside the gate of the Redemptorist Fathers’ Juvenat. Uphus managed to escape, and Jan, who was not yet 16 years old, was released the same day. Thijs and Wicher, however, no longer felt safe at home and joined the group of hiders who were in a shelter under the floor of a classroom in the girls’ school at Schoolpad. On the night of Christmas Day, Dieudonné Verstappen, a local resident arrested for theft, showed the hiding place to German paratroopers. A Kriegsfeldgericht (improvised martial court) presided over by Major Ulrich Matthaeas sentenced the hiders to death on December 26, 1944. Later that same day, the brothers were shot along with ten others in the Elmpt Forest, just over the Dutch-German border. Two others were shot there on December 27, 1944. The brothers’ names adorn a plaque on the facade of the St. Alfonsus School and the monument at the Tussen de Bergen cemetery in Roermond. [2][3]
The monument in the cemetery stands on the common grave for the war victims of Roermond [1#4], so it is a grave monument [1#5].
His name is also on the war memorial at the entrance of the cemetery. [4]
He belonged to the 14 Roermonders who were shot in order to expel their male townmates between the ages of 16 and 60. Detailed information: The Tears of Roermond.
Thijs Oljans is listed in the Erelijst 1940-1945 (Honor Roll of the Dutch Parliament). [7]
Footnotes