Arrests
In February 1944, a young female courier was arrested by the French police and extradited to the Gestapo. Against all rules, she had a notebook with her containing names and addresses of Dutch-Paris members. She was brutally interrogated by a guard that held her head under cold water until she nearly drowned. Under torture she revealed many names of key members of the underground network. As a result, a large number of Dutch-Paris members were arrested.
The name of Jean's sister Gabrielle Weidner was among them in the notepad. She was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned at the Fresnes prison in Paris, because it was hoped for that her comrades would try to free her. In Fresnes she was treated fairly good, but when this trap didn't work, she was shipped to concentration camp Ravensbrück in Germany, where she died of the effects of malnutrition, only a few days after the liberation by the Russians.
During the occupation, Jean was arrested by both French gendarmerie and French Milice, including the Swiss border police. The French gendarmerie beat him up brutally, but they had to release him later due to lack of evidence. In another arrest by the Milice in Toulouse he was tortured, but he managed to escape before they could transfer him to the Gestapo. The Gestapo were never able to get a hold of him.
Read more about this topic: Johan Hendrik Weidner
Famous quotes containing the word arrests:
“On our streets it is the sight of a totally unknown face or figure which arrests the attention, rather than, as in big cities, the strangeness of occasionally seeing someone you know.”
—For the State of Vermont, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“I claim that in losing the spinning wheel we lost our left lung. We are, therefore, suffering from galloping consumption. The restoration of the wheel arrests the progress of the fell disease.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)