Memorial J.J. Hamelink

The monument to J.J. Hamelink reminds the residents of Haarlem of the resistance fighter who was killed in battle against the occupier on October 18, 1942.

In 1934, J.J. Hamelink live with his wife and two children in the house above the baker's shop on Slachthuisstraat. Hamelink was a trade unionist, social democrat and pacifist. As a worker at the main workshop of the Dutch Railways, he tried to motivate his colleagues and bosses to fight against injustice. When the Netherlands was occupied, Hamelink immediately took the lead in the resistance. He made every effort to paralyze railway traffic throughout the country in order to sabotage the deportation of Jews to the concentration camps. In addition, he took in many Jewish people in hiding, provided people with false identity cards and distributed illegal newspapers. Eventually Hamelink was fired by the Dutch Railways and he had to go into hiding himself. Just when his resistance unit wanted to initiate a national railway strike, betrayal struck. Hamelink was 40 years old when he was killed on 18 October 1942 during a meeting of the organized resistance in Rotterdam.

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