Date of birth:

July 19th, 1915 (Amsterdam, the Netherlands)

Date of death:

June 13th, 2004 (Utrecht, the Netherlands)

Nationality:

Dutch

In June 1940, Huub Lauwers leaves Manila for London. He joins the Princess Irene Brigade. He is then recruited by SOE and trained as a radio operator. Together with Thijs Taconis, he is dropped near Ommen on 11 November 1941. He is betrayed, tracked and arrested by the Germans in March 1942. He decides to work with the German Abwehr but deliberately makes mistakes when sending messages to warn the recipients of his messages that he has been arrested. However, these mistakes are not noticed in London, which means that the sending of weapons and agents to the Netherlands continues. This was called the 'England-Spiel'. In total, the Germans captured 59 agents, most of whom were locked up in Camp Haaren. Of these, 54 died, almost all by executions in Mauthausen, in the period from 6 to 8 September 1944. Lauwers was eventually transported via Vught and Sachsenhausen to Rathenow on 15 September 1944, where he was liberated on 25 April 1945.

Do you have more information about this person? Inform us!

Period:

Second World War (1939-1945)

Rank:

Reserve 1e Luitenant

Unit:

N Section, Special Operations Executive (SOE), British Government

Awarded on:

May 2nd, 1953

Citation:
"Distinctly distinguished himself by courageous conduct against the enemy as an agent of a secret intelligence service, which sent him to enemy-occupied territory, where he had to fulfill a life-threatening task under extremely difficult circumstances.
After being arrested by the enemy, he skillfully managed to gain the trust of the Germans in the England-Spiel they had set up and tried to make proper use of this trust to warn the intelligence service in LONDON of his capture.
Finally, he was taken to a concentration camp in September 1944 and liberated in April 1945.

Decoration presented 12 July, 1955 in Vught

• - ERIK MüLLER, Het Bronzen Kruis, Studiekring Ridderorden en Onderscheidingen.
  - https://www.onderscheidingen.nl/
  - Archieven.nl