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Limburg 1940-1945,
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The fallen resistance people in Limburg
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Cammaert writes about him in a summary: Venlo and elsewhere, police detective. Resistance pioneer. Became involved in helping Jews and was affiliated with the O.D. Since the middle of 1943 he led a wandering existence, but he remained involved in all kinds of resistance activities, especially help to Allied refugees. For some time Pollaert produced the illegal magazine “Oranje Hagel.” [1.1]
As for so many, Harry Pollaert’s resistance activities began with assistance to (French-speaking) prisoners of war who had escaped from Germany. [1.2]
The occupiers had observed, that many Dutch soldiers had become active in the resistance. Moreover, the German war economy had an ever-growing shortage of workers because more and more German men had to go to the front. Therefore, on April 29, 1943, it was announced, that the Dutch soldiers had to go back into captivity. On the same day the first strikes broke out and soon spread to large parts of the country. In Venlo, Harry Pollaert and Lambert Meyers produced about fifteen hundred pamphlets calling for sabotage and a general strike. [1.3]
In Chapter 5, Cammaert writes about three committed policemen in Venlo: At the start of the final deportation phase of Venlo’s Jews in April 1943, three police officers, Aarts, Snellen and Pollaert, had as many Jews as possible warned when they would be picked up and they arranged for hiding addresses, for example in Sevenum and Grubbenvorst. In August 1943, the SiPo-Maastricht arrested Aarts and Snellen. [1.4]
After the war, Pollaert sided with Wierks in the conflict between acting chief of police Henk Wierks, accused of corruption, and his (resistance) colleague Jan Theelen. Wierks was accused of accepting gifts from black marketeers. On September 28, 1945, an investigator of the National Security Bureau reported that the police purge in Venlo was getting completely out of hand: I was informed that several individuals who testified against Mr. WIERKS during interrogations by the Political Investigation Department or during witness examinations before purge committees, were arrested a few days later by order of Mr. WIERKS, and taken to the Camp in Steyl. This is covered by Insp. H. POLLAERT, head of the Political Investigation Department. [3]
Footnotes