Date of birth:

March 14th, 1904 (Zandvoort, the Netherlands)

Date of death:

February 5th, 1943 (Leusden/Leusderheide)

Nationality:

Dutch

Willem ‘Wim’ Gertenbach was, among other things, publisher of the Zandvoortse Courant newspaper. In it, he fiercely criticised National Socialism. In September 1941, the newspaper was banned. He then became involved in publishing the illegal newspaper Het Parool. On 31 January 1943, he was arrested by the SD. Via the Scheveningen prison (Oranjehotel), he was transferred to the Amersfoort concentration camp on 17 July 1942. From 14 to 19 December 1942, he stood trial before the Luftgaugericht in Utrecht and was sentenced to death. With twelve peers, he was executed on 5 February 1943 on Leusderheide.

After a mourning service in the Dutch Reformed Church in Zandvoort, he was reburied in his birthplace at 2pm on Tuesday 4 December 1945. He was posthumously awarded the Resistance Cross on 9 May 1946. A tragic peculiarity is that his widow and his three children (Willem, Niesje and Nieke) were killed in an Allied air raid on Haarlem.

In 1946, he was posthumously awarded the Resistance Cross. Streets were named after him in Amsterdam and Almere. In late 1947, one of the public schools in his hometown of Zandvoort was named and a tile was laid in his memory in the local Walk of Fame in Kerkstraat.

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• Photo: Willem Johannes Gertenbach | Oorlogsgravenstichting
  
• - WoF stone Zandvoort photo Marcel Wijnstok.
  Overlijdensakte 252 d.d. 7 december 1945 gemeente Leusden.