Roskam, Evert Jan.

Roskam, Evert Jan, born 22-01-1892 in Barneveld, son of Hendrikus Roskam, shopkeeper en corn merchant and Dirkje, born Bloemendaal, broke off his study HBS education and joined the company of his father in foodstuffs. As the company collapsed, bankruptcy, in 1922, he went to Amsterdam to become a merchant and farmer, but this company collapsed also after a couple of years. Always interested in politics he shortly after it was set up in 1933, joined the NSB of Anton Mussert

as an agriculture specialist. Mussert was executed age 51 on 07-05-1946 and buried in a mass grave.

The National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (abbreviated: NSB) was a Dutch political party that existed from 1931 to 1945. The NSB adhered to the ideology of National Socialism, presented itself not as a party but as a movement based on an anti-democratic attitude and functioned as a collaboration party during the German occupation of the Netherlands in the Second World War.

Roskam was proud of his low registration number, 2698, and he zealously propagated NSB ideology in agricultural circles. He was convinced that this was the way: ‘to give the independent farmer and the self-employed citizen an honorable place in our political and social system, which could crush the power of the big capitalists and of revolutionary Marxist trends.’  After being interned in the Mai-days of 1940, German’s attack on Holland, the occupation offered Roskam new opportunities. The Peasant Front was an organization of the NSB, which grew out of one of the departments of the Agricultural Service of the NSB, and was created in July 1940 in preparation for the People’s Food Stand. Farmer’s leader was Evert Jan Roskam. In November 1940, the Peasant Front merged with the Agriculture and Society organization in Drenthe to form the Agrarian Front. He rose to the position of Boerenleider, Peasant leader of the Landstand, Rural class, which united all the farmers. But almost half the farmers refused to pay their contribution. From 1941 all farmers were automatically members of the organization, ordered by the Germans. With his little knowledge of leading an organization he delegated many tasks to his subordinate O.F.J. Damhave, who embezzled money from the NSB organization. In 1943 this corruption was brought to light, and as it was known that Roskam himself had profit of this corruption, he had to retreat from the NSB. Until the end of the war he did not play an important role anymore. After the war ended Roskam was arrested and condemned to three and a half year imprisoned. He condemnation turned out so heavy thanks to unburdening declaration of for example people of the local resistance. After his release he again became a farmer in the Veluwe and stayed good friends with the “Black Widow” “Florrie” Rost van Tonningen-Heubel. and her brother Heubel, Willem Johannes “Wim”. Roskam was married to Gerritje Overveem and the couple had six children, three boys and three daughters. In the 60^th he wrote some articles in publications of the Farmer Party in which he claimed still to stay behind his old ideals. Florry  Heubel was married with Meinoud Marinus Rost van Tonningen  (Soerabaja, 19-02-1894 – Scheveningen, 06-06-1945) was a Dutch politician who, as leader of Dutch National Socialism during the Second World War, collaborated extensively with the German occupiers. After the accession of Rost van Tonningen, the NSB took an increasingly radical course. Rost van Tonningen stood out, among other things, for anti-Semitic statements. Just before the Germans invaded the Netherlands, a number of NSB members were arrested. Rost van Tonningen was also arrested and charged with high treason. The fleeing Dutch authorities kept moving Rost van Tonningen and he eventually ended up in Calais. From there he had to be transferred to England, but before that happened he was liberated by the Germans. After the Netherlands was occupied and Meinoud Rost van Tonningen was liberated, he was appointed liquidation commissioner of Marxist organizations by the commissioner of the Netherlands, Arthur Seyss-Inquart.    Rost van Tonningen cooperated with the occupying forces’ plans. He was tasked to unite youth, farmers, workers and women in National Socialist associations. However, Rost van Tonningen did not have much success in this.

Shortly after the war, Meinoud Rost van Tonningen was arrested. He spent some time with some SS officers in an internment camp in Elst and was transferred to Scheveningen Prison on 24-05-1945, ,. He died here on 06-06-1945, age 51, one year after D-Day. According to official reports, he committed suicide by throwing himself over a balustrade. However, his wife Florentine Rost van Tonningen – better known as ‘black widow’ – has always denied this.

Death and burial ground of Roskam, Evert Jan.

  Evert Jan Roskam died age 82 on 04-10-1974. Evert Jan Roskam is buried next to Mr. Hermannus Reydon

  (secretary-general of the Departement of Public Information and Arts of the NSB. Reydon and his wife, on 07-02-1943 were eliminated by the resistance man Gerrit Wilhelm Kastein  . Reydon´s wife died immediately and Hermannus died age 46 on 24-08-1943. Kastein was arrested by the SD Security Forces on19-02-1943. He tried a suicide by jumping from a window shackled to a chair, but died in the hospital of a fracture of the base of the skull. Kastein, age 33, is buried on the Field of Honor Cemetery in Loenen, Section A/113. The grave of Roskam on the local cemetery Lunteren has a odal-rune  and the grave of Hermannus Reydon a reverse of the eolh-rune . Closeby the grave of Cornelis “Kees” Geelkerken Inspecteur-Generaal of the Dutch, NSB, paramilitary Landwacht, Paratroopers. Here with the German Hitler Youth leader Artur Axmann in 1943.

 

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