Even under Nazi Germany’s ruthless rule, sport kept the Dutch people going. Football remained largely untouched by the occupiers and attracted thousands in attendance.
But the pitches, courts, and fields also harboured heroes of the Dutch resistance, who fought for the country’s freedom by giving shelter to Jewish families, sabotaging German war efforts, being the extension of the Dutch government-in-exile in London, and standing up to oppression.
During the week in which we celebrate 80 years of freedom, we tell the stories of the resistance heroes who lived double lives on and off the theatre of their sport.
Episode 1: Gerben Wagenaar, the Dutch resistance hero who sparked his football club's fire
Episode 2: Ad van Eerd, the resistance hero who captained PSV to their first title
Episode 3: Olympia, the Amsterdam boxing school which formed the first Jewish resistance
Episode 4: Piet Roodenburgh, the field hockey prodigy who gave his life for the resistance
Jan Carel Wijnbergen
After Monday's story about Gerben Wagenaar and De Volenwijckers, we stay in Amsterdam for today’s resistance hero. We move from the north to the south-east of the city and visit a much better-known club: Ajax.
Jan Carel Wijnbergen was only 14 when the Second World War broke out in the Netherlands. The young man loved playing football on the Nieuwmarkt in the heart of Amsterdam and caught the eye of Ajax shortly before the war. A scout approached the talented striker after a game for his local club, WMHO (Wie Moed Houdt Overwint, which translates to Who Keeps Courage Wins).
“Afterwards, a gentleman came and asked if he could have a chat with my parents,” Wijnbergen told Nederland Dagblad in 2009. “He was looking for youth players for Ajax. After consultation, I was allowed to transfer. Of the 62 boys, only one other person and I were allowed to stay.”
Young resistance fighter
After Nazi Germany occupied the Netherlands in May 1940, Wijnbergen - who grew up in a poor family and started working as a window cleaner at a young age - soon found another cause which called his name: the resistance.
Wijnbergen joined the resistance in early 1941 under the influence of his father, a window cleaner and staunch communist. It all started with delivering packages with pamphlets; as a recipient of one of the parcels ripped it open, Wijnbergen saw a big stack of pamphlets demanding an end to the persecution of Jews in the Netherlands. The pamphlets called for a big strike, known as the February strike, the same famous February strike that Gerben Wagenaar was a mastermind of.
In the months following the strike, Wijnbergen stayed with the resistance as a delivery boy, sometimes for pamphlets or clandestine newspapers and later also for weapons. A certain Gerben Wagenaar was one of the recipients of Wijnbergen’s weapon deliveries.
Wijnbergen, who got the alias Gerard Maas, took on more responsibility within the resistance by forging identification cards, stealing and copying stamps from the German Sicherheitsdienst (the central intelligence agency) and Wehrmacht (armed forces) to help Jewish children who needed to go into hiding.
Trouble at Ajax
In 1943, Wijnbergen - still a fervent football player - receives a junior membership at Ajax and soon transfers to the senior squad, where he makes a couple of cameos and scores once. Still only 18, Wijnbergen was simultaneously an Ajax player and resistance fighter, pairing football practice with the illegal distribution of goods. Wijnbergen often skipped practices and favoured his resistance work, much to the club's dismay.
“For the Ajax youth team, we had practice three times a week. But because of resistance work, I was increasingly unable to come and play football,” Wijnbergen said. “That's why I was called to account. Of course, I couldn't tell them that I had to take Jewish children to the other side of the country. So I just said I didn't feel like it any more. Then it was soon over.‘’
But then, in 1944, Wijnbergen was arrested by the Sicherheitsdienst at the Ajax grounds. He was caught with copies of the illegal resistance newspaper De Waarheid in his possession and was transferred to the Sicherheitsdienst headquarters.
After not answering a single question during two bloody interrogations, Wijnbergen was sent to concentration camp Kamp Amersfoort for insulting the German Reich – the same camp that Ajax striker Gerrit Nieuwkamp was sent to in 1942.
Escape
At Kamp Amersfoort, Wijnbergen got put to work at the Soesterberg airbase. The Ajax talent got a lucky break when an Allied bombardment of the airbase gifted him an opportunity to escape.
Wijnbergen found a way off the airbase, a story he wrote about in his book, ‘Er stond iemand naast mij’. “It was winter and we were wandering through the forest there in the snow, when I said: I see fire,” wrote Wijnbergen.
“And a bear,” one of his fellow escapees said. It was not a bear, however, but a familiar face for Wijnbergen: Ferry Mesman from Amsterdam. “I knew him; he had a transport company. Ferry was standing there refilling the gas generator of his car with wood - you had a lot of cars running on wood gas back then - when I tapped him on the shoulder.”
Wijnbergen returned to Amsterdam, where his brothers welcomed and sheltered him.
Jan Carel Wijnbergen, still only 19 years old at the time, continued working for the resistance until the liberation of the Netherlands in May 1945. He never returned to football and passed away in 2012 at the age of 86 after a prolonged illness, but never failed to attend the commemoration of four Jewish children who were killed on Nieuwmarkt by the Nazi German occupiers.