The fallen resistance people in Limburg

Frans Gerard Marie Joseph Coehorst (Frans, “Van Aken”)

Het Grote Gebod – L.O.

The 18-year-old Frans Coehorst was asked by Hendrikx after his graduation from high school to work for him as a courier in the Limburg district and secretary. [1]
Thus he knew many prominent L.O. members. Arrested on February 29, 1944, along with P.N.A. Peters, Harry Holla, the parish priest Omloo and Fons Berger. Immediately thereafter, alarming news reached Hendrikx from Maastricht. Nitsch and his SiPo colleagues were doing everything they could to get Coehorst to talk. For four days he was hung by his wrists. The whole time he was given neither food nor drink. However, Coehorst’s release from Maastricht prison, scheduled for early April 1944, did not take place because Coehorst and a group of other prisoners had been transferred to Amersfoort the previous day. Via Kleve, Leipzig and Hanover, he finally ended up in Flossenbürg (Bavarian: Flossabirch), where he had to work in a car factory. The mistreatment in Maastricht and possibly elsewhere had weakened the 18-year-old so much that he died of total exhaustion in the Heinrich Braun hospital in Zwickau on November 1, 1944. [1][2]

In his former school, the Valuascollege in Venlo, he is immortalized on a memorial plaque for the war victims of this school. [4]
He was buried in Zwickau in an unknown grave. [5]
This person is listed in the “Erelijst 1940-1945” (Honor Roll of the Dutch Parliament). [3]

Footnotes

1. Dodenboek Venlo
2. Dr. F. Cammaert, Het Verborgen Front – Geschiedenis van de georganiseerde illegaliteit in de provincie Limburg tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Doctorale scriptie 1994, Groningen
   6. De Landelijke Organisatie voor hulp aan onderduikers, p. 581-582
3. Erelijst 1940-1945
4. Oorlogsgravenstichting.nl
5. https://www.wo2slachtoffers.nl/bio/61619/Coehorst-Frans-Gerard-Marie-Joseph.htm