Post, Johannes, (resistance names Hemke van der Zwaag and Johannes van Setten), resistance fighter, born in Hollandscheveld 
04-10-1906. as the son and the last of eleven children of Jan Wolters Post, farmer and peat cutter, and Trijntje, born Tempen. Married on 26-11-1929 to Dina Salomons (1903-1991). From this marriage, besides 1 son who died young, 3 sons and 5 daughters were born.
Johannes Post descended from a family of small farmers in Drenthe. After primary school, he attended MULO for one year, after which he worked on his father’s farm. Post, a member of the Reformed Church, became a member of the Young People’s Association on Reformed Basis in the Hollandscheveld branch at the age of sixteen, of which he became chairman in 1926. In 1929, the year of his marriage, Post settled as a farmer in Nieuwlande. He also traded in poultry, eggs and horses. Johannes also set up a freight service for poultry farmers in his region. He joined the Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP) 
and became a councillor and alderman of the municipality of Oosterhesselen in 1935. Post made himself known as a hard-working, intelligent, non-conformist and very principled personality, who did not shy away from adventure. Although shocked by the German invasion on 10 May 1940
and very anti-national socialist, Post did not become directly involved in the resistance until mid-1942. A person in hiding wanted by the Sicherheitspolizei 
found safe shelter on his farm. In the winter of that year, Post set out to find hiding places for Jews. He did this together with his brother Marinus,
who had previously hidden Jews on his farm in Kampen. Through his involvement in the ARP, Post maintained close contacts with the leaders of that party and with the resistance group around the illegal newspaper Trouw. Marinus on 17-11-1944, age 42, was executed in Alkmaar together with four others under the name Hubertus Ham, the name on his false identity card. After the war he was reburied in the honorary cemetery in Overveen next to his brother.
Johannes Post’s plan to go to the west of the Netherlands during the May days of 1940 to fight the Germans was abandoned due to the rapid end of the fighting and the demotivation of a local preacher. Until 1942 he was involved in ‘smaller’ acts of resistance such as refusing to pay income tax because of the German occupation and distributing illegal literature. The first person in hiding on the farm, in 1942, was Arnold Arnoldus Conradus (Arnold) Douwes. 
He inspired him, started working with Post and would survive the war. After the war, Arnold Douwes married one of his female hidders. In 1947, he and his wife settled in South Africa, but the apartheid regime was a bitter pill to swallow. They had 3 daughters, but after 9 years they moved to Israel in 1956. There he witnessed the unveiling of the Nieuwlande monument for the support of the Jews in hiding in Nieuwlande at the Yad Vashem Institute. In 1966, Douwes divorced his wife in Israel. His ex-wife and daughters stayed behind, while he returned to the Netherlands in 1986 and settled in Utrecht, where he died. He was confined to a wheelchair during the last years of his life. He died in Utrecht, 07-02-1999, aged 93.
From Hoogeveen it came to the establishment of a district of the LO, the National Organization for Assistance to People in Hiding, which also made the work in Nieuwlande viable, and in which Post participated. During this period Post came into contact with Frits de Zwerver 
, collected distribution coupons via the Hoogeveen District of the LO, was involved in the forging of identity cards and accommodated many Jewish people in hiding in Drenthe. In Nieuwlande itself, according to a statement from the resistance fighters themselves from 1946, more than 80 Jewish refugees were housed. Early 1943 he had picked up the Jewish girl Celine “Lien” Kuijper 
from Amsterdam-Zuid and taken her in. Celina Kuijper went to do courier work and was reunited with her fiancé Ies Davids. He started updating identity cards.
Post received a revolver from his brother Marinus. This was Post’s first step towards armed resistance. Attempts to liquidate the Dutch traitor De Krol failed. This was carried out by Jan Naber 
and Albert Jan Rozeman. 
Albert Jan Rozeman was arrested in his home and seriously abused. After a few days he was sent to Camp Vught, 
then to Scheveningen, again to Vught, then ‘s-Hertogenbosch and finally to Overveen, where he was shot in the dunes on 06-06-1944, on D Day, age 30, with many others.
The resistance group called themselves ‘the N.V.’, which was later filled in as Nico and Victor. However, Post, among others, set fire to the WA building in Hollandscheveld. The collaboration with ‘the N.V.’ was short-lived, because Casper Antonius Johannes Naber 
Rozeman and Post did not get along. On 10-11-1944, Naber’s address was betrayed by a secret agent who had recently been forced to cooperate by the Sicherheitsdienst. Naber was locked up in the notorious Scholtenshuis on the Grote Markt in the city of Groningen. After undergoing the first interrogations, he was overcome by the fear of breaking down during the next interrogations and betraying other resistance fighters belonging to the mission group. He took his own life the next day by jumping out of the attic window of the Scholtenshuis. Casper Naber was only 38 years old.
Post inspired a small KP group from Nieuwlande and Geesbrug, which became known because they raided five Local Bureau Holders on 23-06-1943, thereby destroying the administration surrounding the food supply and exemptions for Germany. It concerned the PBHs of Nieuweroord, Oosterhesselen, Sleen, Zweeloo and Hollandscheveld. Post mostly kept himself in the background. During these raids, he showed the way once.
Johannes Post, Celina Kuijper, Ies Davids, Jan Naber and Albert Rozeman hid for a while in the woods on the Kerkhofdijk in Hollandscheveld when the Germans were desperately hunting down resistance fighters.
First arrest Post and Lien Kuijper, who worked for Post as a courier, were arrested on 16-07-1943 in a boarding house in Ugchelen by the Apeldoorn police officers Jan Lamberts and Jannes Doppenberg. Both were locked up in the Apeldoorn police station. Post managed to escape but was immediately arrested again. On 18-7-1943 he was finally freed by a Dutch detective. An escape attempt by Celine Kuijper failed and she was transferred to Camp Westerbork 
. An attempt to free her from there failed. From Westerbork she was transported to Poland and gassed immediately upon arrival.
In the summer of 1943 the German hunt for the Drenthe resistance intensified. Post, who was hunted down fiercely after his escape, continued under the false identity ‘Hemke van der Zwaag’. Post escaped a new arrest during an identity check. The ‘N.V.’ joined the KP-Meppel and ‘cracked’ the distribution office in Staphorst. The Germans took revenge on the resistance. In the autumn of 1943, three men were shot dead in the doorway of their homes or somewhere along the side of the road in Meppel and Staphorst, without any form of trial. These were the first victims of Aktion Silbertanne.
Aktion Silbertanne (Action Silver Fir) 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 runic symbol 
of the fir branch behind the target’s name on the list of Dutch prominent figures.
Because Post’s activities had become too well-known in Drenthe, he moved his activities to a national level. In the course of 1944, he became a member of the top of the Landelijke Knokploegen (LKP). Together with his brother Marinus, he worked from Rijnsburg, where their brother Henk Post was a minister.
In January 1944, Johannes Post and his resistance group settled in Breda at Nachtegaalstraat 12. 
Offices in Hardinxveld (failed) and Oegstgeest were raided, among others. An attempt to free Van der Zande, a district leader of the LO, failed. Raid in Woerden, Spijkenisse and Rhoon also failed. Attempts in Leiderdorp (04-01-1944), Poortugaal (12-01-1944), Oud-Beijerland (20-01-1944), Klundert (21-01-1944), Heerjansdam (25-01-1944), Boekel (04-02-1944), Lisse (15-02-1944), Katwijk (08-04-1944) and Maassluis (10-04-1944) were successful. During a raid on a police station on Archimedesstraat in The Hague (19-02-1944) many revolvers and official documents were stolen. After a raid in Zwijndrecht (21-02-1944) on the distribution office located in the town hall, Post was almost arrested.
In March 1944, Post was invited to join the Top-LKP and he focused on the North again. He was invited to go to England to continue his resistance work from there, but he declined. In May 1944, Post was involved in the most successful raid on a printing company, the Hoitsema printing company in Groningen.
In the last years of the war, many leaders of the resistance were arrested. A major setback was the arrest of Hendrik “Henk” Dienske, 
provincial leader of the LO Noord-Holland and Amsterdam. Leendert Marinus Valstar, 
better known as ‘Bertus’, and later Izaak van der Horst were also arrested. Post succeeded Leendert Valstar and transferred leadership in the North to Reint Albartus Dijkema. 
He was often accompanied in his work by the Jewish Betsij Henriette (Betty) van der Harst-Trompetter, alias ‘Tineke’ of ‘Gon van der Laan’ 
better known in resistance circles as ‘Tineke van der Laan’. His new base of operations in Amsterdam became the Witte de Withstraat at the Van der Duin family.
Henk Dienske was betrayed and arrested in 1944, after which he eventually died in the German concentration camp Beendorf. on Beendorf, 16-02-1945, age 37. Leendert Valstar was shot on 04-09-1944, age 36, together with Izaak van der Horst, Jacques de Weert and sixty others. Of the approximately 3500 prisoners who were transported to Sachsenhausen during this period, almost none survived the war. Reint Dijkema was transferred to Camp Vught and executed there on 22-08-1944. Dijkema was 24 years old. Betty van der Harst-Trompetter survived the war and died, aged 86, Voorburg, 23-04-2003, from a muscular disease in a hospital in Voorburg.
On Friday 23–06-1944, exactly one year after the four successful raids in one day, a raid on a distribution office in Haarlem was carried out on Post’s orders, which failed. Johnnes Wilhelm “Jan” Wildschut, 
who had been added to the raiding party at the very last moment, was arrested and taken to the Weteringschans House of Detention in Amsterdam. His stay in the Weteringschans, that of Wim Hartsveld, who was later arrested, and the presence of dozens of other resistance fighters led to Post’s decision to free these prisoners. However, this plan was betrayed by the NSB 
man Jan Boogaard, 
causing the raid to fail and the resistance fighters involved to be arrested. Wildschut died on 31-01-1945, age 31 in Camp Leonberg. Leonberg was a satellite camp of KZ Natzweiler.
After the Second World War, Jan Boogaard was imprisoned in the Weteringschans 
The interrogations began the day after the arrests. However, no one said a word. Around noon, seven arrested participants in the raid were brought together: Johannes Post, Jan Niklaas Veldman,
Willem Frederik Smit, 
Arnoldus “Arie” Stramrood
Jacobus Gerardus “Jacques” Stil 
, Hilbert van Dijk
and Cor “Cornelis” ten Hoope, 
the latter two on stretchers. Guus Trestorff, 
who was most seriously injured during the shooting, had already died in the Wilhelmina Gasthuis. Eight resistance fighters who had been involved in the attack on the population register in Amsterdam more than a year earlier were added to this group. They were driven to the dunes near Overveen in a closed truck. There, the entire group, including the wounded, was shot. All victims were buried in a mass grave in the dunes. On 25-07-1945, the bodies were found and later reburied at the Bloemendaal Cemetery of Honour. 
Shortly after the liberation, the traitor Boogaard was arrested and admitted to his interrogators that he had informed his SD bosses of the entire plan immediately after the first meeting with the Amsterdam Knokploeg. Boogaard, age 26, was sentenced to death by the court on 19-07-1946 and the sentence was carried out on 01-03-1947. Most of his German SD bosses, including Willy Paul Franz “Willy” Lages, 
the head of the Amsterdam SD, one of the “Four of Breda”, got off with prison sentences, on the grounds of his failing health. The decision taken by the minister of justice Ivo Samkalden 
provoked a public outcry. Lages received medical treatment in Germany after which he lived for another five years in Braunlage (Harz).. Lages died 02-04-1971, age 70.
A military barracks in Havelte is named after Post, the Johannes Postkazerne, in Rijsoord the Capitulation Museum and a bridge in Zwinderen and Leiden. A number of schools bear his name, including in Sneek, Amstelveen and Hazerswoude-dorp. In at least 29 Dutch places a street is named after Post. In Assen there is the Johannes Post Groep, a scouting association.
After the war, Post was posthumously awarded the Resistance Cross 
1940-1945 by Royal Decree, and he was also posthumously awarded the Resistance Memorial Cross 
later on. The American government awarded him the Medal of Freedom with Silver Palm. 
This medal was presented to his family in The Hague on 08-04-1953. Johannes Post and the village of Nieuwlande received the Yad Vashem award 
from the State of Israel in gratitude and recognition for their help to Jews.
Post, Johannes is buried at the cemetery of honor, Bloemendaal, North Holland, Netherlands. CH2G+JF, 2051 EC Bloemendaal.
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