The fallen resistance people in Limburg

Sophie Marie Amélie Jacqueline Brinkman (Sophie)

Sophie Brinkman was the daughter of notary Herman Brinkman and Francisca Brinkman-Rohling in Roermond. She married Frenchman Paul Marie de Puniet de Parry in 1936 and helped escaped French-speaking prisoners of war on their way back home.
She took down radio messages from the BBC and Radio Oranje in shorthand, which she and her father relayed through the daily underground newspaper De Postduif.
Source: geni.com. This is also the source of the photo on the right. [1]

During the war years, she and her father helped distribute the illegal newspaper De POSTDUIF. This was edited by the engeneer Schlösser and D. Steenmeijer. The latter obtained the opportunity from Bob Bouman, who, like Steenmeijer, worked for the CCD (Crisis Control Service). The notary H.J.F. Brinkman and his daughter Mrs. S.M.A.J. de Puniet de Parry distributed the sheet, which was intended to provide news to people in shelter or hiding during the final phase of the war. The 70-year-old delivered most of the copies to the air-raid shelters where almost the entire population of Roermond lived during that time. On January 12, 1945, Brinkman, his wife and daughter were arrested. All three died in a Cologne prison in March 1945. [1][2]
The latter is not correct; her mother was still able to be taken to a hospital in Maastricht, where she died of typhus. [3]

In Cammaert’s book we read about this family tragedy:
From September 1944 to January 12, 1945, a typewriter-produced newspaper, called "De Postduif," was published in Roermond with news about the Allied advance, taken over from the B.B.C. and Radio Oranje. The producers wanted to inform the population of Roermond, living in cellars, as much as possible about the latest developments on the fronts. "De Postduif" appeared daily in a circulation of about sixty copies. The producers and distributors included 70-year-old notary H.J.F. Brinkman, his daughter S.M.A.J. de Puniet de Parry-Brinkman, A. Raupp, the engeneer Schlösser and D. Steenmeyer, a person in hiding from The Hague . The Van Leeuwen couple typed the magazine in the apartment of the resister M.A.M. Bouman, who was executed in early May 1943.
On January 12, 1945, German soldiers found a copy of "De Postduif" in the apartment of the Brinkman family. The aged notary, his wife and their daughter Sophie were arrested and imprisoned in the Cologne prison, where they wers treated very badly. Herman Brinkman died there on March 5, 1945, his daughter five days later. [4]
Sophie died in Cologne’s Klingelpütz prison on March 10, 1945. [5]
The city and the jail had been liberated just a few days before, on March 6, 1945. [6] Her father had died the day before. Her mother, as mentioned above, died on March 27, 1945, in one of the repatriation hospitals in Maastricht of typhus, which she had brought with her from jail. [3]
It is not unlikely that Sophie and her father, in their weakened condition, also fell victim to this disease. Typhus was rampant in Cologne and many other places in Germany about the end of the war. [7]
Sophie and her father were buried in Cologne.
Unlike her mother, they are not listed on the Roermond War Memorial nor in the database of the Oorlogsgravenstichting (War Graves Foundation).

Footnotes

1. geni.com Sophie Marie Amélie Jacqueline Brinkman
2. Winkel/De Vries, De Ondergrondse Pers p. 214. Publ. NIOD
3. Dossier oorlogsgravenstichting Francisca Alberta Maria Brinkman-Rohling # 12
4. Dr. Fred Cammaert, Het Verborgen Front - Geschiedenis van de georganiseerde illegaliteit in de provincie Limburg tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog Hoofdstuk XI p. 1093, III.18. De Postduif
5. oorlogsbronnen.nl Sophie Marie Amelie Jacqueline Puniet de Parry-Brinkman
6. WDR 6. März 1945 - Die US-Armee nimmt Köln ein
7. Kirchenzeitung für das Erzbistum Köln, 6. März 2020 Das Wunder von Köln?
8. http://www.maastrichtsegevelstenen.nl/0.OORLOG/oorlog2c-verzet.htm