Memorial Execution Henk Sneevliet et al Camp Amersfoort

On the grounds of Kamp Amersfoort is an information board on the spot where prisoners of the Sicherheitsdienst were executed and buried in 1942. The eight victims were linked to the illegal group MLL-Front.

The resistance group Marx-Lenin-Luxemburg-Front (MLL-Front) was one of the first important and influential resistance groups in the Netherlands. One of the leading figures was Henk Sneevliet, a politician with national and international fame. In the period February 24 to March 6, 1942 almost the entire staff of the MLL Front was arrested by the SD. Eight suspects - including Henk Sneevliet - were sentenced to death. Shortly after they were transferred to Camp Amersfoort, the sentence was carried out (on April 13, 1942). Immediately after the liberation, the search for victims who had been buried in the vicinity of Kamp Amersfoort started. The recovered victims, including the men of MLL-Front, were given a more dignified resting place. As well as other execution sites and former grave sites, the spot where the men of MLL-Front were executed also fell into obscurity.

Every year around April 13, the Sneevliet Commemoration Committee organizes a commemoration at "Westerveld" in Velsen, where the urns of the victims were interred. The activities of the memorial committee also included a visit to the Leusderheide. For a long time it was believed that eight victims were murdered here. It was not until 2010 that archival research showed that the place of execution of the men of MLL-Front was not located on the Leusderheide, but close to Kamp Amersfoort, behind the monument De Stenen Man. A memorial ceremony took place here for the first time on 21 February 2011.
In order to preserve the memory of the victims and to be able to inform visitors and mark the site, an information board was designed in consultation with the Sneevliet Memorial Committee, which was unveiled on 11 November 2012 and where traces of the excavation work from July 1945 are still clearly visible .

The names of those executed on the memorial are:

Henk Sneevliet, Ab Menist, Willem Moody, Cor Gerritsen, Jan Schriefer, Jan Koeslag, Jan Edel and Rein Witteveen.

A few months later on October 16, 1942, the prisoners Aaldert IJmkers and Johannes Roebers were also executed in the woods near Woudenberg (see memorial execution October 16, 1942). Their names are also on this monument.

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Source

• Text: Edwin van der Wolf
• Photos: Otto van Huffelen (1), Pim Alders (2, 3, 4, 5)