Bennekom - Bennekom in World War II

Bennekom in World War II

Bennekom was occupied by Nazi troops on the first day of invasion, 10 May 1940. For the following days, the village was in the front line between those troops and Dutch forces on the higher land west of the Grift between Rhenen and Veenendaal. The first casualties on 10 May were Gerritje E. Joosten and E.J. Westerik. The next day, four civilians were killed and two fatally injured by stray artillery fire from the Grebbeberg, the hill at Rhenen. Among the Dutch forces defending the Grebbeberg, J.H. van Dijk of Bennekom was killed in 13 May. The country capitulated on 15 May.

During the following years, many Jews sheltered in Bennekom. About two-thirds of them survived the War; the others were mostly slaughtered in Sobibor and Auschwitz. As the war progressed and repression increased, the Underground became increasingly active and were sometimes shot. Several Allied aircraft were shot down in the parish and a German transport plane with about 10 crew crashed at Hoekelum on 4 December 1943.

On 30 December 1942, the two bells of the Old Church were confiscated and removed for melting down. One of them was on a boat sabotaged and sunk by the resistance, and was recovered after the War. A new one was cast in 1949 to replaced the stolen one.

On Sunday 17 September 1944, two Bennekommers were among the 57 civilians killed by Allied bombs that were intended for the barracks east of Ede but fell in the built-up area of Ede near the railway. The fighting after the Airborne landings that afternoon stretched into the forest on the edge of Bennekom parish. Several Allied aircraft crashed near Bennekom village. During the subsequent escape of Allied forces, several members of the Bennekom underground led some of the Allies to liberated territory across the Rhine; some lost their lives during the attempts.

After the liberation of the area south of the Rhine and Waal, Bennekom again became front line with intensive Allied artillery fire from south of the Waal against German positions around Bennekom. On 21 October, the village was evacuated and became Sperrgebiet, ‘forbidden territory’ except for slaves and forced labour working on the German defences. Besides buildings destroyed by Allied artillery, the German forces destroyed many properties on the edge of the village to clear their line of fire. On 23 November 1944, a munitions depot in Bennekom’s windmill blew up, killing about 100 German troops and destroying properties in the area. The German casualties were buried in the village cemetery but exhumed and transferred to the general German cemetery in the Province of North Brabant after the War. A stray V-1 rocket exploded in the village in 1945.

In the night of 6/7 March 1945, SS Officer Hanns Albin Rauter, the leader of the Sicherheidsdienst, ‘Security Service’, in the Netherlands, was badly wounded in a mistaken ambush (intended to acquire a German lorry) at the Woeste Hoeve on his way from Didam via Arnhem to Apeldoorn. The reprisal was the largest massacre in the Netherlands during the War: 275 people. A German sergeant who refused the firing order was also shot on the spot. Of the victims, five came from Bennekom: Maarten H. Lugthart; Jan Mekking; Peter Roseboom; Lambertus (Bart) van Elst (all executed at Amersfoort); Hylke van Vliet (executed at Loosdrecht).

The empty village was ‘liberated’ by Canadian and British troops on 17 April 1945 but remained front line until the surrender of German forces in the Provinces of Utrecht, and North and South Holland on 6 May 1945. However Dutch SS around Veenendaal continued to fight in the area until 9 May. They shot two members of the Gloucestershire Regiment in the west of the parish on 22 April. Evacuees started to return to the devastated village on 12 May.

In the summer of 1945, Canadian forces erected a monument to the Bennekom casualties of the massacre in March 1945 and some other members of the Underground in a small park at the south end of the village street, now called Bart van Elst Park. Every year, on the Dutch national Remembrance Day, May 4, a procession of local residents silently walks through the town towards the monument, where wreaths are laid, the Dutch national anthem is sung and a two minute silence is held for these and other victims of the Second World War.