Liberation Route Marker 014: 'Once in your life do something good...' - Jan van Hoof

'Once in your life do something good...' - Jan van Hoof
Before the War, Jan van Hoof was active in the Scouts and he naturally gravitated to the Resistance. He spent months observing the German activities on and around the two Waal Bridges. He became a guide to a reconnaissance patrol, but had to pay for his fearlessness with his life.

On September 20 1944, there was heavy fighting around the bridges in Nijmegen. The situation for the Germans worsened as the Americans and British steadily gained ground. SS Colonel Heinz Harmel of the 10th SS Panzer 'Frinsberg' division ordered the road bridge to be blown up, but the charges did not explode. Some of the explosives were defective, and the Americans had succeeded in cutting the fuses to others. Other fuses had already been cut on September 18 by the 22 year-old Dutch student Jan van Hoof. Jan van Hoof, a member of the Scouts who was in the resistance, was arrested and executed by the Germans on September 19, as he was guiding a British armoured vehicle t

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Source

• Text: TracesOfWar & Liberation Route Europe
• Photos: Jimmy Hilgen (1, 3), Arie van Wijngaarden (2)

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