Keijer, Jannes Luitje.

Keijer, Jannes Luitje, born 03-05-1895 in Groningen, the son of Lucas Keijer and Alida Geertruida, born Ploeger. Before the war, Keijer had been a valued traffic cop in the city of Groningen. He was chairman of the police band and lived with his wife and daughter, their only child, in a reasonable-looking apartment on the Tweede Willemsstraat, near the main station of the Dutch Railways. When gas became scarce and the people of Groningen had to cut back on gas rations, Keijer asked for an exemption, appealing to his zeal and commitment to the German cause: ‘I have been engaged as a liaison between the German and the Dutch police and therefore I come very irregularly. at home and have been working almost uninterrupted 10 to 12 hours a day as working hours in recent times.’ The request was not honored.Keijer suffered even more setbacks. His daughter was engaged to Jakob Teerling, who died in German military service in October 1943. He brought his own death upon himself by his indecisiveness. He discovered a trail to soldiers in hiding and bragged about it. ‘Nächste Woche, then you will see something,’ he said in the presence of an alleged kindred spirit, Cor Stolwijk, a spy of the resistance.

Jannes became a Dutch collaborator and member of the Germanic SS. Sublieutenant Keijer succeeded Anne Jannes Elsinga, who was also murdered, as Chief of Special Investigation in Groningen. Keijer thought he had a good relationship with NSB member Cor Stolwijk, who in reality was an important double spy for the resistance. The National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (abbreviated: NSB) led by Mussert, Anton Adrian “Ad”.

was a Dutch political party that existed from 1931 to 1945. The NSB honored the ideology of National Socialism, presented itself not as a party but as a movement from an anti-democratic point of view, and functioned as a collaboration party during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.

During one of his visits to Stolwijk, Keijer revealed that he had tracked down lines of soldiers in hiding in and around Bedum. Stolwijk passed this information on to members of the resistance, whereupon it was decided that he should be liquidated. On Saturday evening, 22-04-1944, Keijer, after his last visit to Stolwijk, was shot at Bedum station by resistance fighters Michael Henrich and Willem te Lindert and succumbed to his wounds the same evening in Groningen hospital.

Following the attack on Keijer, Aktion Silbertanne was carried out on 24 and 25 April. Aktion Silbertanne (Action Silver Spruce) was a code name for a series of assassinations and assassinations committed by Dutch SS men and Dutch Eastern Front veterans between September 1943 and September 1944. The name “Aktion Silbertanne” is derived from the marking with the cross-like rune sign of the spruce branch after the name of the target on the list of Dutch prominent people. An earlier ‘working name’ for the operations of this secret assassination squad, still unknown during the war, was Aktion Blutbuche (red beech).

This fell into two parts; first of all, a number of people were targeted or shot and then a large raid was held in which all young men between the ages of 18 and 25 had to be arrested. The following persons survived Aktion Silbertanne:

Reverend H.L. Lieve in Middelstum – was not at home. Riekus Pot, Leader of the local distribution office in Stedum – was shot at, but survived the attack. Pot Sr., father of Riekus Pot – shot at, but survived the attack. Hendrik Heijs   director of primary school for special education in Middelstum (was murdered because Reverend H.L. Lieve was not found at home).The following persons did not survive the raid:

Cornelis Gerhardus Georgius Bos – baker’s assistant in Zuidwolde, Jan Kornelis Dwarshuis

– baker in Zuidwolde Jannes Wiebe Formsma – contractor in Bedum (was arrested instead of his son and killed in Groningen). Klaas Havinga  – butcher in Zuidwolde. Jan Reinder Visser – Zuidwolde Led by Hauptsturmführer Friedrich Bellmer, the SD, Feldgendarmerie and the Grüne Polizei, about 1000 strong, carried out a large-scale raid in Winsum, Middelstum, Bedum and Zuidwolde on 25 April. In Bedum, the detainees were gathered in hotel Krijthe, in Middelstum in café Van Lakum, in Winsum in Hotel Til and in Zuidwolde in Klaas Hekma’s café. A total of 148 young men were arrested. These were not only residents of the villages mentioned, but also bus passengers who were passing through and had age against them. Of the 148 detainees, 140 were taken to camp Amersfoort and from there in July 1944 to Germany for employment. The remaining 8 were immediately released after counting.

In memory of this raid, a plaque is dedicated to the victims. This can be found on the wall of the former hotel Krijthe in Bedum.

Anton Mussert, leader of the NSB, was against these murder squads. When SS-Brigadeführer Eberhard Schöngarth, himself a mass murderer, heard of these acts of violence, he put an end to them in September 1944. SS Obergruppenfuhrer and the highest SS and Police Leader in the occupied Netherlands, Hanns Albin Rauter was sentenced to death partly on the basis of these actions.

Death and burial ground of Keijer, Jannes Luitje.

  On Saturday evening 22-04-1944, age 48, the police officer Keijer, after having a drink at an acquaintance’s, went to Bedum station to take the train back to Groningen. When he arrived there, he was hit by ten bullets, fired by two members of a thug squad who were waiting for him. “He was still calling for his mother,” an eyewitness later said. The policeman died that same evening on the operating table of the Academic Hospital. First Keijer was buried at a local cemetery in Groningen, but after the war reburied at the German War Cemetery Ysselsteyn, Section AT. Row: 5. Grave: 116, in the section for Dutch traitors.

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