Putten raid

The Putten raid (Dutch: Razzia van Putten) was a

concentration camps inside Germany. Only 48 returned at the end of the war. The raid was carried out as a reprisal for a Dutch resistance attack on a vehicle carrying personnel from the Wehrmacht

.

Background

On the night of 30 September-1 October 1944, a car carrying two officers and two corporals of the

German Army was ambushed by members of the Dutch resistance near the Oldenallerbrug bridge between Putten and Nijkerk

. In the attack, a resistance fighter named Frans Slotboom was wounded; he later died. One German officer, Lieutenant Otto Sommer, was also injured, and escaped to a nearby farmhouse to raise the alarm; he died the following day. The two German corporals fled while the second officer, Oberleutnant Eggart, was injured and captured. Due to his wounds, the resistance fighters abandoned him in a place where he could be found by the Germans.

German reprisal

The German reprisal raid was conducted the following day. At the command of General

Meppen-Versen, Beendorf, Wöbbelin and Malchow

.

Only 48 men returned after the end of the war, but another 5 died, due to their mistreatment in the camps, after they arrived home. Some people returned crippled, as they had been kept in small cages they could not stand in. As further reprisals, the

SS set fire to 105 houses.^[1]

A total of 552 men and 1 woman died, mostly victims of malnutrition, slave labour, and infectious diseases.

Memorials

A monument commemorating the victims of the raid was unveiled by

Queen Juliana on 1 October 1949. The monument includes a memorial park designed by Jan Bijhouwer, and a sandstone statue called "treurende weduwe" (mourning widow) by Mari Andriessen

depicting a grieving woman in traditional dress with a handkerchief in her hand, better known as "het Vrouwtje van Putten" (The little Lady of Putten). The statue looks toward the Oude Kerk (Old Church) in Putten, from where the men were deported.

A silent memorial is held at the monument on 2 October each year, attended by hundreds of people. Wreaths are laid by the College van burgemeester en wethouders (The College of the Mayor and Municipal Executives), the "Stichting oktober '44" (The October '44 Foundation), surviving returnees (the last one died in 2013), schoolchildren from Putten and other organizations from the Netherlands and abroad. No speeches are made, but a music group plays appropriate music and a choir sings verses of Psalm 84, as the Putten men did when they were taken away.

52°15′N 5°32′E / 52.25°N 5.53°E / 52.25; 5.53