Date of birth:

July 21st, 1907 (Rotterdam/South Holland, Netherlands)

Date of death:

March 8th, 1945 (Amsterdam/North Holland, Netherlands)

Buried on:

Dutch Honorary Cemetery Bloemendaal
Plot: 37. 

Nationality:

Dutch

Lived at 22 Vondellaan in Leiden. Son of deputy administrator of the Royal Netherlands Navy in the Dutch East Indies, Lieutenant Colonel Everhardus Adrianus van Welij (21 April 1877 The Hague - 28 February 1945 Tjimahi (N.I.) and Louise Helene Schöttle (26 May 1885 in Stuttgart - 13 May 1946 Leiden. Married Adèle Maria Eck (14 December 1908 Cologne, Germany - 21 October 1994 Oegstgeest) on 12 August 1936 in London. Children: Lodewijk Alexander Cornelis, 17 February 1937 The Hague; Marie Louse Adèle, 7 September 1938 Leiden - 18 April 1977 Oegstgeest; Louise Helene, 29 September 1939 Leiden. Agricultural engineer. Assistant at Tolan Estate in Pangkattan (N.I.). Dutch Reformed.
Jan van Welij returned from the Dutch East Indies in 1938. He became a professional soldier and was stationed in Leiden. During the German invasion in May 1940 he fought, among other things as a battery commander near Valkenburg in South Holland, Sassenheim and Delft.
After the capitulation, Van Welij transferred to the Reconstruction Service. This service was set up by the Germans to deploy unemployed Dutch soldiers after the capitulation to repair war damage. In March 1941 he became deputy leader of the Works department of the Dutch Labour Service (NAD). This was the successor to the Reconstruction Service, which aimed to educate the Dutch people in the national socialist ideology. He rose to the position of ‘labour leader’.
Van Welij belonged to a resistance group within the NAD. His resistance attitude became clear in October 1943 when he demonstratively refused to give his commander the obligatory German salute (a ‘Heil Hitler’ salute without these words). He was also a member of the Ordedienst (OD), a national illegal organisation that had partly originated in military circles.
In September 1944 he deserted and went into hiding in Amsterdam with OD member Dessing and later with Naarstig. He joined the OD as an armament officer, which later merged into the Binnenlandse Strijdkrachten (Internal Armed Forces).
On 16 February 1945, he was arrested by members of the Landwacht (a pro-German Dutch paramilitary organisation) during an assignment in Hoorn. He was transferred via Alkmaar to the prison in Amsterdam and put on the Todeskandidaten list of people eligible for execution in reprisal.
His arrest resulted in the arrest of several other resistance fighters, including his contact in hiding, Naarstig.
On 8 March, he was executed by firing squad along with 52 other men, including Naarstig, on the Amsteldijk in reprisal for the - unintentional - attack on the Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer in Nederland Rauter. Their bodies were temporarily buried by order of the occupying forces in mass graves in the dunes near Overveen.

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• Photo 1: Eerebegraafplaats Bloemendaal
• Photo 2: Arjo Eijgelsheim
• - Heere en Vernooij - Eerebegraafplaats Bloemendaal
  

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