Willem Sassen - Private Biography, Family

Private Biography, Family

Willem Sassen was born in Geertruidenberg, Netherlands. He grew up in a traditional Roman Catholic family in North Brabant and went to gymnasium in Neerbosch near Nijmegen and in Breda. His father was impressed by the fascist ideas of the Zwart Front (literally 'Black Front'). Sassen decided not to become a priest but to study law in Leuven and Gent instead. As a student, Sassen became a member of the German-Flemish workers' group De Vlag. When Sassen visited the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, his admiration for Hitler and Nazi Germany grew. Because of Sassen's pro-Nazi political activities, the authorities expelled him from Belgium, so he could not finish his law studies.

In 1938 Sassen became a recruit in the Dutch army and was trained as an artillerist. When Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands on 10 May 1940, Sassen was a member of the 7th Field Artillery regiment and was taken prisoner by the Germans for a short time.

Sassen married Paula Fisette in 1940, divorced, and later married Miep van der Voort, with whom he had two children. One of them is their daughter Saskia Sassen (* 1949 in The Hague), the internationally-known American sociologist and professor in economics. In the 1970s, in his third marriage Sassen married Els Delbaere, daughter of a Flemish artist who, because of his Nazi past, had fled to Argentina.