 |  | Stein
https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1422695#map=10/50.9743/5.8646Early on during the occupation, small groups throughout the Netherlands began helping refugees. This started with escaped French prisoners of war who wanted to go home, later also Jewish families and children came, and still later crashed Allied air crews.
Meers is a village on the Meuse River, which belongs to the municipality of Stein. The Meuse flows around it in a loop. The aid organization Dutch-Paris had set up an escape route via Meers, where refugees were taken by villagers in rowboats across the Meuse to Belgium. From there, they went via Brussels, Paris and Lyon to Switzerland or Spain [1]
Meers is the birthplace of vicar Giel Berix, one of the founders and the first leader of the Heerlen district of the L.O..
In the municipality of Stein there were other active resistance groups, organized by village, which joined the L.O. in 1943. Because the administrative manipulations of some officials threatened to come to light, the K.P.-Sittard carried out a raid on the town hall of Stein on the night of July 25-26, 1944. [2]
After D-Day, the Normandy landing, and after the Allies had overcome their initial difficulties, most Germans realized that the war was actually already lost.
In early September 1944, there was a shootout between the Meers resistance group and dozens of heavily armed German soldiers entrenched at Meers Bridge. On the German side there was one dead and two wounded.
After the soldiers surrendered, they were dispersed in small groups on Meers, where by then nearly 40 of their brothers-in-arms were being held as prisoners of war [2]
In those days, such events occurred all over the Netherlands. So also in Maastricht.
On Dolle Dinsdag (Mad Tuesday, september 5, 1944), the liberation of 80 prisoners finally succeeded there. See: The raid on the Maastricht prison on september 5th, 1944
- elsloo.info Ontsnappingsroute in de oorlog via Meers
- 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.680
Liberated: 1944-09-18
