4th candle: The resistance [1]

Two descendants of Valkenburg resistance fighters:
Anton Laeven and Gerda Schunck

If you cannot and will not look away you come into resistance.
You don’t choose to resist. You roll into it automatically.

Also in Valkenburg in 1940-1945 there were people who did not tolerate the degrading behavior of the occupying forces and resisted.

Who hid Jewish fellow citizens and took Jewish children from Amsterdam and other places by train to the South, to places such as Houthem, IJzeren and Broekhem.

Who stole food coupons and distributed them to those who had gone into hiding, e.g. to escape the forced labor in Germany, the so called “Arbeitseinsatz”.

Who helped escaped prisoners of war and crashed airmen on their way home.

They were there, those silent heroes, also in Valkenburg-Houthem.

Anton Laeven told how his father Albert Laeven in Schin op Geul joined the resistance and helped so many to go into hiding here.

About Jean Caubo, also from Schin op Geul. He worked on the dormitory train (Wagons Lits) between Amsterdam and Paris and later at the Gare du Nord station in Paris. As a member of the Dutch-French resistance group “Dutch-Paris,” he brought many Jews and airmen to Paris and later through Paris. But he himself ended up in a concentration camp through betrayal and was murdered there.

You can read Gerda Schunck’s story about her father Pierre Schunck on the next page.
More about these three resistance fighters can be found on Jo van Aken’s historical photo route, presented on this site at a href="verslagVburg2024.php?lang=en&page=35">Points 2 and 3 of the Adventure Walk for young people.

| resistance in Valkenburg | genocide of the Jews in Limburg | genocide of the Romani in Limburg and elsewhere | Germans killed in action in Valkenburg-Houthem |