Roosenburg, Henriëtte Jacoba “Yet”.

Roosenburg, Henriëtte Jacoba “Yet”, born 26-05-1916, in The Hague,  daughter of Willem Roosenburg (1885-1952), general practitioner, and Anna Christina Alberda van Ekenstein (1889-1976). Henriëtte Roosenburg remained unmarried. Henriette grew up in a wealthy, secular family in The Hague, with two sisters and two brothers. After the early death of the eldest brother, she was the eldest. Her father and grandfather were well-known general practitioners. Her mother’s noble Groningen family had chamberlains, judges and politicians. She attended the Dutch Lyceum in The Hague. Yet Roosenburg wrote stories and poems at a young age. She studied literature in Leiden and obtained her bachelor’s degree in 1939. During her studies she learned Spanish, Russian and French and translated the Estonian novel Wargamäe (1939).

It is unclear when JYet Roosenburg joined the resistance. She was present at the famous protest speech by Leiden professor Rudolph Pabus Cleveringa and probably stopped her studies afterwards. She said she started helping Jewish people in hiding. In the course of 1941 she became involved with the Hague branch of the illegal newspaper Het Parool. She distributed two hundred copies of each edition and from January 1943 to August 1943 she collected news from illegal radio stations for the editor-in-chief. Since 1942 she no longer had a permanent residence and was in hiding in various places in the country; she escaped the waves of arrests that hit Het Parool in 1942. In May 1943, she was recruited as a courier for the resistance group Fiat Libertas (FL), which helped Allied pilots escape to Brussels. That year, FL had begun smuggling intelligence into Switzerland which was sent from there to the Dutch government in London.

Roosenburg spoke fluent French – she had obtained her MO certificate in 1942. As a courier, she smuggled microfilms to Brussels or France from September 1943. She often took an Allied pilot with her or someone who had to travel to London. She also smuggled weapons. The initiators of the establishment of Luctor et Emergo, later Fiat Libertas, were the mayor of the Betuwemunicipality of Deil, Mr. Willem Marinus Kolff,

deacon Reinier David Kloeg from Rotterdam (born 23-02-1908) and J.C. Wannée from The Hague, civil servant at the National Food Supply Agencywartime. The three had numerous contacts. Kolff and Kloeg, who met in 1941met, helped people who for political reasons or because they were Jewishwanted another identity or wanted to flee. In connection with this they were concerned with itrelease of identity cards. Furthermore, they gathered and searched for all kinds of informationways to allow visitors to England to move to Switzerland or Spain. They had no troubletoo much, but each time they encountered new obstacles. Furthermore, there was a separate forgery office on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam run by the Jewish painter and playwright Elias “Eduard” Veterman, which provided Luctor with invaluable services.

At the end of October 1944, Willem Kolff was taken to Sonnenberg in Germany. As an opponent of the Nazis, the “Nacht and Nebel” prisoner had to disappear silently. No more information was provided about him, administratively he had ceased to exist. The prisoners in Sonnenberg had to do precision work for a nearby weapons factory. There were contagious diseases, the prisoners did not get enough food and became exhausted. Willem Kolff died in Sonnenberg on 25-01-1944.

Reinier David Kloeg, arrested at the end of April 1943 and executed on 15-03-1944. On 28-06-1946, Eduard Veterman, age 44, died in a strange traffic accident. He is driving his Morris with his wife on the Vredelaan in Amersfoort and has to cross a major road. A heavy army truck arrives and crashes hard into the couple’s car. He would no longer have been able to brake. Veterman’s car is said to have had braking problems. Possibly even a worn (cut?) brake cable.

After the top of FL was arrested at the end of September 1943, Roosenburg and two others continued the work as Group BM (Bern Musketeers). At the end of December 1943 she traveled to Bern to check the route. After betrayal, she was arrested in Brussels on 01-03-1944 and ended up in the Oranjehotel, the infamous penal prison in Scheveningen,

and from mid-March in the prison in Haaren. Her friend Johanna Elisabeth “Els” Boon took over the flight line. In June 1943, Roosenburg was transferred with all arrested members of FL to the Kriegswehrmachtsgefängnis in Utrecht, where the German military court sentenced them to death on 04-07-1944. To the accusation that Roosenburg had smuggled nineteen ‘Terror’ pilots, she replied: ‘Mr judge, there were 23’ (quoted Vanèl, ‘Boeven’, 52).  On 31-07-2004, Els Boon survived the war and  died in Bloemendaal, age 87.

While awaiting her death sentence, Roosenburg shared a cell in the Utrecht prison with Nelly “Nel” Elisabeth Lind , one of the leaders of FL, and Johanna Maria (Joke) Folmer , who had helped 320 people escape. Shortly after Mad Tuesday (9/5/1944), the three women were transported as Night and Night prisoners. Via four German prisons, they ended up in a prison in Waldheim on 04-02-1945, where they suffered hunger and cold – they survived by singing and secretly embroidering patches. On 06-03-1945, the three women were liberated by the Russian army. Due to a lack of transportation, the women walked to the city of Riesa. There they obtained a sloop and a Russian travel pass, and sailed down the Elbe for four days. They received help from Russian soldiers, who also instilled fear in them: the day after the liberation they had already seen rapes in the prison. In Coswig they were taken from the river and after a few weeks were exchanged for Russian prisoners of war. In a Red Cross camp, as ex-political prisoners, they were given priority to fly to Brussels. Queen Wilhelmina wanted to meet them there, but they wanted to go to the Netherlands as quickly as possible. They came home to their family in mid-June 1945. Nelly Elisabeth Lind (Alkmaar, 12-10-1913, survived the war and died age 83 in Utrecht, 22-05-1997) and Johanna Maria (Joke) Folmer died in december 2022, age 99 at Schiermonnikoog.

In August 1946 Roosenburg left for the United States. She spoke at schools and universities to raise money for the World Student Service Fund, which helped students affected by the war. She wrote about her impressions of America in the Knickerbocker Weekly, an English-language magazine for Dutch people, and in 1948 she found a job at Time Life Inc: she worked alternately for Time, Life and Fortune as a European correspondent and ‘reporter-researcher’. For years she was J.K.’s right-hand man. Jessup, who wrote the editorials in Life.

Roosenburg published in The New Yorker in 1958 about her captivity in Scheveningen and Haaren. The translation appeared as a series in the Panorama (‘The world between blank walls’). An American stage adaptation was broadcast live on American TV on 30-10-1958. However, plans for a novel did not get off the ground. She developed increasingly serious back problems and arthritis

Death and burial ground of Roosenburg, Henriëtte Jacoba “Yet”.

In 1966 Roosenburg received an extraordinary war pension from the 1940-1945 Foundation. She gave up her job and moved from the United States to her holiday home in Le Poët-Laval, France. On 20-06-1972, Jet Roosenburg died of cardiac arrest while sitting at her typewriter. She was buried in her hometown. The British Royal Air Force Escaping Society placed a statue on her gravestone in gratitude.

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