My book is not translated in English, but I will try to answer any question you wanted to ask about him. Do you know more about their lives? What was there profession? I think you are too young to have met them, but do you know when they died? I can image you have some questions about your great grand niece. Who was your great grandfather, Dirk Johan or Nicolaas Christiaan? I know little about them. Dirk Johan emigrated to Canada in 1905, Nicolaas Christiaan in 1907. Willem had two sisters Elsina Adriana (1876-1977) and Catharina Wilhelmina (1883-1944) and three brothers: Hendrik Cornelis (born 1877), Dirk Johan (born 1882) and Nicolaas Christiaan (born 1890) Willem was the youngest child, born in 1894. At this moment I’m rewriting this book to make an extensive biography of Arondeus. Title: Onbekwaam in het compromis: Willem Arondeus, kunstenaar en verzetsstrijder (Unable to Compromise: Willem Arondeus, Artist and Resistance Fighter). Hello Nicole, in 1993 I published a book on Willem Arondeus, in Dutch. Their conviction was a foregone conclusion.Īrondeus said he hoped that by his life and death, he could prove that “homosexuals are not cowards.” Yad Vashem has honored him as Righteous Among the Nations. They successfully destroyed about ten thousand records, but five days later the entire unit was arrested. On March 17, 1943, he and other members of his resistance unit set the Amsterdam General Registry Office on fire, trying to destroy all the original records so the false identity papers couldn’t be checked. (Being himself part of a persecuted minority, perhaps he felt a special kinship with them.) He urged other artists to stand up against the Nazi invaders. In 1940, after the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, he joined the resistance.Īrondeus utilized his artistic skills by forging identity papers for Dutch Jews. At a time when homosexuality was still illegal and deeply taboo, Arondeus spoke openly about it.įor seven years in the 1930s he lived with his lover and struggled to make a living. He was the son of theater costume designers and one of six children, but became estranged from his family after he came out as gay at the age of seventeen. On this day in 1943, Willem Arondeus and eleven other Dutch resistance members were executed for sabotage and treason in connection with their anti-Nazi activities in the Dutch Underground.Īrondeus, an artist, novelist and biographer, was rather old for a resistance fighter he was 48 at the time of his death. (Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. 1943: Willem Arondeus, gay resistance fighter Van Dantzig died in 2012, aged 78 from lymphoma and male breast cancer. Van Dantzig published a biography of the Dutch artist and resistance fighter Willem Arondeus in 2003. An English translation, For a Lost Soldier, was published in 1996. It was awarded several times and a film was made of it. In 1986 he wrote an autobiographical novel, Voor een verloren soldaat, about his love affair while a young boy with a Canadian soldier, which became a great success. After Sonia Gaskell (left in 1969) and his other colleague left in 1971, he was the only artistic leader, till 1991. Since 1965 he is co-artistic leader of Het Nationale Ballet (Amsterdam, The Netherlands). In 1986 he wrote an autobiographical novel, Voor een verloren soldaat, about his love affair whi Rudi van Dantzig (Amsterdam, August 4, 1933), is a Dutch choreographer, ballet dancer and writer. Rudi van Dantzig (Amsterdam, August 4, 1933), is a Dutch choreographer, ballet dancer and writer.