Latuperisa, Eduard (Eddy) Alexander.

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Latuperisa, Eduard (Eddy) Alexander, born 09-04-1902 in Kudus, District Government Koedoes, Java, Netherland-Indien to Hendrik Alexander Latuperisa (1869–1945) and Anna Sophia, born Pichel (1870–1960), Eddy was married (1927) to Louise Fernande, born Hoeke (1902–1989), had two children May and Jacky/Iek (1930–2010).

Despite his Moluccan origin, he was on par with the colonial European-Dutch elite and was able to pursue a military career. He studied at the Royal Military Academy from 1924 to 1925 and was promoted to Captain of Infantry in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL).   Eddy was a In 1939, he returned once again, this time with his family, to the Netherlands to continue his studies at the War Academy (Hogere Krijgsschool) in The Hague. Eddy was classmate of Peter, “the Zeeuwse Soldier of Orange” Tazelaar a Dutch resistance fighter who first left the Netherlands as an England sailor and later returned to the Netherlands as a spy. The naval school in Den Helder The May days of 1940 (May 10–15) of the German occupation until the Dutch capitulation were experienced by him as a staff officer, a position he had attained on 28-08-1939, during the general mobilization of the Dutch army. On 15-07-1940, he took the oath that Dutch officers had to swear to the occupier, pledging not to commit any hostilities against the German occupiers. Nevertheless, he simultaneously became a “traitor” and got involved in the Dutch resistance.

He joined the resistance organization Ordedienst (OD), organized the collection and hiding of weapons, provided reconnaissance services for the Allies, supported the liberation and escape of prisoners, and recruited more resistance fighters from the military youth, the cadets. On behalf of the group leader, Lord Johan Schimmelpenninck, alias “Uncle Alexander,  Latuperisa organizes bridge evenings to recruit cadets for the officer training program. For security reasons, he left his family, who lived on Frederik Hendriklaan in The Hague, in the spring of 1942 and hid at Groot Hertoginnelaan 210.

Eddy Latuperisa was betrayed ( as so many other resistance men) by a cadet who “came to his house daily, but after a temporary arrest had defected to the German security police” and was arrested in The Hague on 13-03-1942. Thus began his odyssey thru various detention facilities: Scheveningen, Oranjehotel Prison (March 13 – November 6, 1942);

Amersfoort Transit Camp (November 6, 1942 – March 2, 1943); Vught, Kamp Herzogenbusch (March 2 – March 11, 1943); officially Herzogenbusch Concentration Camp and finally the Haaren Camp, where the trial took place before the German military court on 15-03-1943. It was the so-called 2nd Order Service Trial – previously, in a 1st OD trial, 72 men, also John Schimmelpenninck, age 55, had already been sentenced to death – in which he was sentenced to death for his illegal, anti-German actions, his possession of weapons, and betrayal of his word of honor (see above, family and profession). Until his execution, he was housed in the Wehrmacht prison on Gansstraat in Utrecht. Here he had the opportunity to receive visitors and write farewell letters.

Death and burial ground of Latuperisa, Eduard (Eddy) Alexander.

On 29-06-1943, at 2:30 PM, a firing squad carried out the sentence against him and fifteen other OD men in a wooded area on the Leusderheide. After a mass grave he, age 41, was reburied to the Municipal Cemetery Rusthof in Amersfoort. Dodeweg 31, 3832 RE Leusden.

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