Life Outside Politics
During the German occupation he was taken hostage in Buchenwald concentration camp in October 1940. Freed one year later, he played a prominent role, as vice-chairman and acting chairman of the illegal Executive Committee of the SDAP, and as a prominent participant in secret interparty consultations. In 1944 he became chairman of the Contact Commissie van de Illegaliteit and a member of the College van Vertrouwensmannen which the London government in exile charged with the preparation of steps to be taken at the time of liberation.
Drees was an Esperantist and addressed the 1954 World Congress of Esperanto, which was held in Haarlem.
Both his sons Jan Drees and Willem Drees Jr. were active members of the Dutch Labour Party, but left the party around 1970 to join the Democratic Socialists '70. The cause was a row with younger party members who wanted to plot a more radical leftwing course for the party. Drees himself left the Dutch Labour Party in 1971 leaving them without their icon, but he never joined the Democratic Socialists '70.
Drees was a Teetotaler. Willem Drees died on May 14, 1988 in The Hague, two months before his 102nd birthday.
In 2004 he ended in third place in the election of The Greatest Dutchman.
Read more about this topic: Willem Drees
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