Followers of the blog will know that I've shared posts concerning Jan de Jong's experience in Holland during WWII and those of the remarkable Hannie Schaft, and Freddie and Truss Oversteegen. I came across a blog that studies these times in this place.
Outbursts of defiant behavior soon became commonplace as stricter laws were imposed in regard to civil disobedience. One of many such incidents occurred when John was attending a martial arts class in Leiden. To a man, the students were intensely anti-Nazi, as evidenced by the following blow-up on a busy city street in broad daylight.
Kapteyn: “On the last day I attended this course, one of the students – who was also the teacher’s assistant – came running into the building all out of breath and told us to get out, shouting: ‘And don’t come back!’ He’d been outside walking with the teacher some blocks away. The teacher was notoriously short-tempered, and when two German soldiers approached from the opposite direction, a sidewalk collision was barely avoided. The soldiers roughly pushed their opponents aside – at which point the teacher, a Jiu-Jitsu expert — angrily grabbed one of the soldiers and tossed him over his shoulder onto the pavement. Without hesitation, the second soldier drew his revolver and shot the teacher dead. His assistant escaped and came running to tell us the Germans might show up at any moment. As the entire class fled out the back door, one of the students grabbed the enrollment records containing the names and addresses of everyone in the class – quick thinking on his part.”
Go here to read the entire post and other posts on that blog.
