Bonekamp, Johannes Lambertus ” Little Jan”.

Bonekamp, Johannes Lambertus “Little Jan”, born on 19-05-1914 in Velzen, to Johannes Gerardus Bonekamp and Dorothea Hilhorst, who married on 31-03-1910,  was a Dutch resistance man. Jan lived with his wife Catharina and one daughter, born in 1940, in Ymuiden. He is approved for the Dutch Army (see About) and from 03-6-1943 he lost his job in a blast furnaces. He was married on 15-09-1938 to Catherina Wilhelmina v.d. Brink, “Trien”. The family lived at 26 Frans Halsstraat in IJmuiden. A daughter is born on 30-04-1940.

In April-May 1943, strikes break out against a call for Dutch soldiers to go to prison and out of general dissatisfaction with the German occupation. There is also a strike at the Van Gelder paper factory and at the Hoogovens in Velsen. Jan Bonekamp, who was a a driver and member of the Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN), played a role in the Hoogovens strike, initially distributing illegal newspapers and strike calls. After the strike, Jan Bonekamp was arrested and interrogated along with many others. Because the Germans thought they had the wrong Bonekamp in custody, he was released. He then walked back home and hid under the floor when the Germans came to get him. After that he went into hiding, a short while in Brabant, and devoted himself to armed resistance. He joined the resistance Jan van Hoof and together with Hannie Schaft

      nickname, “The girl with the red hair”, he on 21-06-1944, shortly after D-Day, assassinated the disputed Dutch SD, Security Service , the ‘wrong’ Zaandam police chief Willem Ragut , age 46, in Zaandam, they shot him, riding on their bikes, several earlier attempts had failed. Ragut was head of the Beverwijk police from 1924 to 1941. Ragut was a member of the NSB and worked for the Sicherheitsdienst. In that capacity, he was responsible for the arrest of several members of the resistance. The Council of Resistance in Zaandam therefore decided that Ragut should be eliminated. Two previous attempts to kill him had failed. On 04-12-1943 Ragut got already involved in a firefight with SS men Willem Albertus Polak and Henk Slot. They had attacked Gerard Pauw and Leendert Verdoorn as part of Aktion Silbertanne. Verdoorn died of his injuries two days later. Ragut was free that day, but carried a gun with him. He did not know that Polak and Slot were on his side. Ragut was hit, but the bullet bounced off his pants zipper.

Hannie was a quiet taciturn girl, Jan a recklessness and resolute man, not a good couple. Hannie Schaft could escape from the scene, but Jan Bonekamp got bullets in his abdomen and dorsal vertebra, in the shooting afterwards and tried to escape also. He knocked at the door of an older couple, but they called the police. He was taken to the police office, and already blind and dying. The Germans sprayed Jan with a stimulant to get him talking. Jan did not say much and hardly murmured a few words. Eventually he mentioned the address of his wife in IJmuiden and probably also that of Cor Koelman, an RVVer who often worked with Hannie. Bonekamp told a fake nurse the place where Hannie Schaft lived. He then died with extreme pain without any help. The police invaded Hannie’s house, but she already had left her home. Hannie later was captured by the Nazi’s agents and executed on 17-04-1945, age 24.  Another Dutch traitor was shot riding on his bike.

 The traitor, policeman Fake Krist  was shot by the resistanceman Gommert Krijger on 25-10-1944, leaving his house in Haarlem, three earlier attempts failed. Hanny Schaft and Truus Oversteegen wearing man clothes,

waited some further to do the same. As reprisal for the at assassination ten men from the prison at de Weteringschans in Amsterdam were shot public against a wall close by. Truus Menger-Oversteegen, above, survived the war. Jan Bonekamp, a hero, is buried, at the age of 30, on the Wester cemetery in Ymuiden.

 

In the early 1980s, some former resistance fighters took action to give the urn with the cremated remains of Jan Bonekamp a place at the cemetery of honor in Bloemendaal. Among them was Brasser, who ordered Bonekamp to kill Ragut. The resistance women Truus and Freddie Oversteegen also supported the request. Bonekamp’s relatives agreed. However, the request was rejected. Three weeks before the end of the war, on 17-04-1945, Hannie was shot dead in the dunes near Bloemendaal by order of Willi  Paul Franz (Willy) Lages SS-Sturmbannführer, head of the Aussenstelle (regional office) der Sicherheitspolizei und des Sicherheitsdienstes for North Holland and Utrecht.

Lages was tried for the first time on 19-07-1946 and was interned in Breda on 24-02-1955. The Special Council of Cassation confirmed the verdict on 12-07-1950. By Royal Decree of 23-09-1952, the new Dutch queen Juliana, the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. This pardon was followed by several demonstrations in the whole country. Due to serious illness, Lages was admitted to the Central Hospital of the Prison System in Vught on 18-05-1966. He lived for almost five more years. He died of a brain tumor in April 1971 at the age of 69.

   

Left the old gravestone of Bonekamp and the new one in 2004.