Early Life
Hazelhoff was born in Surabaya, on Java in the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia), the son of Siebren Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, senior, and Cornelia Vreede. His family moved to The Hague in the 1930s, and then Wassenaar. He travelled to the US in 1938, writing a book of his experiences in 1939, Rendezvous in San Francisco.
He was a law student at Leiden University when the Second World War broke out. He joined the Dutch army reserve, and became involved in the underground after Germany occupied the Netherlands. He managed to escape to the United Kingdom as a crew member aboard of the Saint Cerque, a Swiss merchant ship in June 1941, together with Bram van der Stok and two others.
Read more about this topic: Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema
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