All the fallen resistance people in Limburg

Pierre Heynen

Pierre Heynen (often spelled Heijnen) was an aircraft builder. He worked at the Hague aircraft factory Pander & Sons. Its owner Henk Pander was an enthusiastic member of the NSB [1] and built 555 gliders of the type Schneider SG-38 (Schul Gleiter 38, photo Wikimedia) [2] for the paramilitary National Socialist Flying Corps NSFK. [3]
In Pierre Heynen’s dossier at the Oorlogsgravenstichting (War Graves Foundation) we read on page 5 that he went to work for Pander Flugzeugwerke in Germany on January 18, 1941 [4#5]. This must mean the Pander company in The Hague, because he moved from Maastricht to The Hague on August 22, 1941, but returned to Maastricht on November 19, 1941 [4#2].
He then worked in Herzogenrath for aircraft builder Ferdinand Schmetz, who also built training planes for the National Socialist Flying Corps.
Heijnen Pierre was arrested at the border in Kerkrade on August 26, 1943 … Heijnen Pierre was employed at the aircraft factory in Herzogenrath and then refused to work overtime.
He was sent to a labor camp in Mülheim near Essen. Considering his expertise in aircraft construction, this was most likely the so-called labor education camp (!) AEL Essen/Mülheim
In June 1941, a labor education camp was set up at Essen/Mülheim Airport under the administration of the Cologne Gestapo. Twenty-six officers of the Essen police force acted as guards, and the airport company was responsible for the labor assignments. [5]
He died there of diphtheria [6] and he was buried there: Mülheim a/d Ruhr, Hauptfriedhof grave I/16A/8. [4#6]

He was a member of the N.S.B. for an unknown period of time, but because he died in a labor camp, his political record was expunged on December 28, 1949 by the prosecutor of the Special Criminal Chamber in Den Bosch. [4#12] This chamber dealt with Nazi crimes.
Presumably he was in the NSB because it was expected of him if he wanted to keep his job. When he saw the possibility of working near his home and thus also fulfilling his duty to work in Germany, he took this job in Herzogenrath near Kerkrade. Should his refusal to work overtime be considered as a resistance act or not? Yes, of course. He resisted once, perhaps out of a kind of overestimation of himself. Maybe also because he started to wake up. We don’t know. But he had to pay dearly for it. Maastrichtsegevelstenen.nl therefore calls him a resistance fighter (isn’t that going a bit too far?) and we have included him here in the section “unorganized or one-time resistance”.

Footnotes

1. nl.wikipedia Pander
2. Schneider SG-38 (Schul Gleiter 38)
3. Wikipedia DE Nationalsozialistisches Fliegerkorps
4. Oorlogsgravenstichting, Dossier Pieter Heijnen • #2 • #5 • #6 • #12
5. de.wikipedia, Mülheim a/d Ruhr, #Nationalsozialismus
6. Oorlogsgravenstichting.nl
7. http://www.maastrichtsegevelstenen.nl/0.OORLOG/oorlog2c-verzet.htm