Lennep, Hugo van.

Lennep, Hugo van, born 17-04-1913 in Salatiga, Java, East India, to Herman van Lennep and Olga Benda..Hugo lived with his mother and sisters Helena Olga (1914) and Anna (1917) during his secondary school days at 28 Crayenesterlaanin Haarlem. Hugo played hockey at the BMHC (Bloemendaal-Musschen-Haarlem-Combination).

On 04-09-1939, his mother left with his two sisters on the m.s. Orange from Amsterdam to Java, where his father was Director of the Governmentnements Agricultural companies in Batavia. Hugo then went on to study in Delft to be a structural engineer.

During the mobilization 1939-1940, Hugo van Lennep, as a mobilized.Sergeant, part of the 4th Section VII the Searchlight  Division against Airborne goals. Hugo was also present with his department during the May days of 1940 active in the defense of Ypenburg airfield against enemy Germans air raids and the subsequent battle against the landed paratroopers. While collecting provisions at Binckhorst Castle, three of his mates were shot. This may have motivated him to join the resistance. Hugo designed a monument for them, which was erected in August 1940 in the castle’s garden and unveiled. By October 1939 the recently restored castle had been taken into use by the Dutch army. During the May 1940 Battle for The Hague three soldiers volunteered to try to reach the search light near Ypenburg airport from Binckhorst Castle. They were killed, and got a small memorial in the garden of the castle. In April 1942 the castle became an orphanage for boys.

After the capitulation of the Dutch armed forces, Hugo returned to Delft to complete his studies in civil engineering. In the spring of1943 he refused to sign the declaration of loyalty. Shortly afterwards he gave a no in the calls for employment and captivity. He went into hiding in The Hague.

Hugo van Lennep became involved in the resistance of the Delft students. He made illegal radio stations and provided the “De Bezige Bij” publishing house publication of the booklet ‘Moffenspiegel’./ “Nazimirror” He also worked for “Het Parool”, newspaper and delivered messages.

The resistance of Delft students and teachers during the Second World War started before the student strike of November 1940, just like at other universities in the Netherlands. Immediately in May 1940, all student associations in the Netherlands formed a local Contact Committee, each of which was represented in the Dutch Student Federation. An initiative that did not prove very successful. The contacts between the students were more on an individual level.In November 1940, strikes broke out at the college, as well as at Leiden University, in response to the ban on Jewish civil servants, and therefore some professors, from teaching and they were dismissed. This led to the closure of the college by the Germans. These were the first strikes against German rule and the persecution of Jews in the Netherlands. The immediate reason for the strike was the improvised speech by the chairman of the Practische Studie study association, 27-year-old Johan Barthold Frans van Hasselt,   on Saturday, 23-11-1940. The following Monday and Tuesday, 3,000 Delft students went on strike, after which the occupier closed the college on Wednesday. The college was reopened on 15-04-1941 under strict German supervision. There was also fierce resistance from Delft students and teachers in the subsequent war years.

Johan Barthold Frans van Hasselt (The Hague, 26-02-1913 – Buchenwald, 10-09-1942, age 29) was a resistance fighter during the Second World War. Before the war, Van Hasselt, a member of the Van Hasselt family, was a civil engineering student at Delft Technical College and chairman of the study association Practische Studie. When war broke out, he became a member of the Mekel resistance group. On Saturday, 23-11-1940, Van Hasselt gave a speech at the Oostplantsoen in Delft in response to several hundred students protesting against the suspension of Jewish teachers. The following Monday, November 25, a strike took place by a group of approximately 500 students. This protest was the first public protest against the persecution of Jews in the Netherlands. A few days after the strike he was arrested by the Germans. He was transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he died on 10-11-1942.

Death and burial ground of Lennep, Hugo van.

At the end of 1944 Hugo decided, together with Dick Geerlings, to cross the major rivers to cross to liberated Netherlands. Two attempts failed. At the third attempt, this time also in the company of Jan Dirk van Bilderbeek, they were arrested by the Germans in Dordrecht at the beginning of January 1945 at Dubbeldam locked up and taken to Scheveningen prison (Oranjehotel).

Jan Dirk van Bilderbeek (Dordrecht, 22-04-1919 – Waalsdorpervlakte, 17-02-1945) was in the resistance in the Netherlands during the Second World War. When the war broke out, Van Bilderbeek studied dentistry and became involved in the resistance. At the beginning of January 1945, he tried to cross the rivers with Dirk Geerlings and Hugo van Lennep, who had already made two previous attempts, to reach the liberated Netherlands. They were arrested by Germans in the Biesbosch near Dubbeldam, locked up in Dordrecht and taken to the Oranjehotel in Scheveningen.On 17-02-1945 they were taken from there without explanation and taken to the Waalsdorpervlakte, where they were executed. Van Bilderbeek, age 25, was reburied at the Rusthof Municipal Cemetery in Amersfoort, section/row/number 12 A 26.

On 17-02-1945 they were removed without explanation and placed on the Waalsdorpervlakte executed. For a long time there was uncertainty about the fate of Hugo, age 31 and his friends.

His family in the Dutch East Indies survived the war and they found each other again. In 1946 his mother and sisters left for the Netherlands and searched in vain to Hugo.

Two years later it turned out that the men on the Waalsdorpervlakte  had been shot and were dug up.

. He was found in grave 264 and was on Friday 25-04-1947 reburied on the Eerebegraafplaats/cemetery of honor of Bloemendaal in Overveen, in Section 39.

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