| | Herten
https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1414219#map=11/51.1749/5.9461The village of Herten has been a quarter of the municipality of Roermond since January 1, 1991. [1]
In 1942 the center of the village was destroyed by a bomb explosion. In 1944 and 1945 the entire population of Herten was evacuated (by the Germans) to Drente, Groningen and Friesland. [2]
During the war, 27 inhabitants of Herten were killed by wartime violence: two soldiers, seven bombing victims, six dead in the shelling of evacuation trains, one person shot while fleeing after Russian hiders were found in his house (Jan Wolters), three executed resistance fighters (Jacques Frencken and the Jacques & Jan Moors brothers), and eight people killed by shrapnel, exploding shells, and booby traps. [3]
The act of resistance of the Moors brothers, Theo Boonen and others was that they did not want to go along with the forced evacuation, but preferred to wait for the arrival of the liberators. The part of Limburg that had not yet been liberated, including Roermond and the surrounding area, had been incorporated into Germany, and Major Ulrich Matthaeas and his paratroopers exercised a veritable reign of terror there. [4]
Matthaeas considered anyone who resisted to is orders in any way to be partisans.
During the general evacuation of Herten in January 1945, the three brothers Jacobus Hubertus, Joannes Hubertus and Joseph Hubertus Moors, as well as Theodorus Johannes Hubertus Boonen, Michael Franssen, Leonie Nieskens and Catharina Hansen decided to stay and go into hiding in the barn of the Moors family home. [5]
Cammaert writes about this:
At the end of January 1945, paratroopers arrested four residents of Herten who had gone into hiding, and at the beginning of February several more arrests followed. Two persons were kidnapped to German labor camps. Jan H. Moors, Jacob H. Moors and J. Boonen were shot on Matthaeas’ orders near Castle Hattem near Roermond. [6]
Other sources name his subordinate, first lieutenant Helmuth Behagel, as responsible for these murders. It was probably both of them. In any case, neither of them had to stand for it after the war. [7]
- Herten Wikipedia • Nederlands • Deutsch • English • Français
- • De gedwongen evacuatie naar Friesland, Groningen en Drente • Die gezwungene Evakuierung nach Friesland, Groningen und Drente • The forced evacuation to Friesland, Groningen and Drente • L’évacuation forcée à Friesland, Groningen et Drente • A evacuação forçada para Friesland, Groningen e Drente
- 4en5mei.nl/
- 1944-1945 Ulrich Matthaeas in Roermond
- wo2slachtoffers.nl
- 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 • VIII-IX, p.629 - Jan & Jacques Moors
Liberated: 1945-03-01
The fallen resistance people in LimburgHerten – 4 pers. |
Boonen,
Theodorus Johannes Hubertus Theo | ∗ 1923-02-26 Baexem † 1945-04-16 Herten
| - Herten - Unorganized resistance - People in hiding - Theo Boonen was a farmhand. During the last winter of war, some young people, including Theo, decided not to be evacuated and to go into hiding in the barn of the Moors family. wall: right, row 04-02 |
Moors,
Jacobus Hubertus Jacques | ∗ 1925-04-23 Herten † 1945-02-12 Herten
| - Herten - Unorganized resistance - People in hiding - Jacques Moors was a machine fitter. He was a brother of Jan Moors. Read the story of the Moors brothers and how Simon Wiesenthal [2] became involved …
This person is not (yet?) listed on the walls of the chapel. |
Moors,
Joannes Hubertus Jan | ∗ 1920-01-18 Herten † 1945-02-12 Herten
| - Herten - Unorganized resistance - People in hiding - Jan Moors was a woodworker. He was a brother of Jacques Moors. The municipality of Herten wrote about him to the OGS after the war:
This person is not (yet?) listed on the walls of the chapel. |
Wolters,
Johannes Gerardus Hubertus Jan | ∗ 1910-07-31 Herten † 1944-10-25 Roermond
| - Herten - Aid to People in Hiding L.O. - The miner Jan Wolters had taken in some Russian forced laborers and made no secret of it, had to pay for his carelessness with death on October 25. When he tried to escape after being betrayed by …
wall: left, row 22-03 |