The Raid On The Distribution Office
The ration cards were a means for the Germans to make it difficult for people to go into hiding, because they couldn't get any food. Young men who were to be sent to Germany for the 'Arbeitseinsatz' had to hand in their ration cards. But one way around this was to either fake the cards or steal them .
Some civil servants of the distribution office in Valkenburg (including Willem Freysen) managed to embezzle between 500 and 1000 complete sheets of ration cards per month, to be distributed among people in hiding. They even built up a surplus they gave to other districts. The manager of the distribution office had chosen to ignore this (another example of passive resistance), but when he was replaced in 1944, the scheme was found out and the ration cards were changed. An alternative solution was to have them printed in Amsterdam, but the printer's in Amsterdam was raided by the Germans. So a more 'aggressive' approach was devised, also to wipe out traces of the embezzlement.
Every night, an envelop with the keys to the vault (among other things) was handed over to the police for safekeeping. This envelop was sealed with stamps. Over time, enough stamps were collected (from the waste basket) to make a fake envelop with fake signature and keys. The KP had already stolen a car of the Wehrmacht from a garage in Sittard (plus some barrels of petrol), repaired it and hidden it in Valkenburg. So one night, when the fake envelop was handed to the police, this car, some German uniforms and the real keys were used to empty the vault at the distribution office. By chance, a new 2 month supply had just been sent in and the loot was enormous, filling twelve burlap bags. At first, these were hidden in a farm in Kunrade (nl), but when the Germans started to search through farms, they were brought back to Valkenburg. The officer of the guard, who had participated in the scheme, went into hiding, thus drawing the attention to himself, giving the others freedom to go on with their work.
Read more about this topic: Valkenburg Resistance
Famous quotes containing the words raid, distribution and/or office:
“Each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling.”
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Borrow a child and stay in the house all day with the child,
or go to the public park with the child, and take the child
to the welfare office and cry and say your man left you and
be humble and wear your dress and your smile, and don’t talk
back ...”
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