Dutch Fought Germans With Pitchforks, Axes

Northern Advocate, 29 September 1943, Page 3

Dutch Fought Germans With Pitchforks, Axes

The first detailed account of the great general strike in Holland which led to the imposition of martial law in May has been revealed by reports to the U.S. Office of War Information The strike, described as “a' dress rehearsal for invasion,” began on April] 29, following decrees for the mass de-j portation of Dutch workers to Germany and the re-internment of exservicemen. «

Within half an hour, the reports say, cities and villages throughout the country were completely transformed. Factories, shops and offices closed. Farmers left their fields, vehicles stopped running.

Only automatic telephone and essential public services continued functioning, and these came to a standstill later.. •

Whipped Away

Dutch Nazis going to work at factories and shops were driven off with whips and threatened with knives. Towards evening on April 29 strikebreaking contingents of German police began to arrive in industrial areas.

When work was not resumed martial law was proclaimed and arrests began. German police trucks, with machine-guns mounted on them, cruised the deserted streets, firing indiscriminately. Public Executions

Foliee tribunals passed sentences on hundreds of Dutchmen in every city, and four or six in each village. In most cases the death penalty was imposed.

The executions were sometimes carried out in the public squares of cities, where the public were forced to look on.

In the provinces of Friesland and Groningen, farmers and workers, aided by some Dutch police, attacked the Germans with pitchforks and axes. Most of them were mown down by machine-gun fire. Another disclosure was the text of a pastoral letter of protest by Dutch Roman Catholic bishops against the deportations to Germany. It was read from all the pulpits in the Netherlands on .May 16. “Posterity would consider it our eternal shame if we looked on silently at this injustice,” say the bishops.