This resistance fighter died to continue spreading the truth

For a long time the family grave of Cornelis Riezebos at the De Bieberg cemetery in Breda was neglected. The Friends of Cemetery De Bieberg Foundation recently changed that. The grave in which his wife and both children are also added, looks presentable again.

The foundation wanted to know more about the backgrounds of these resistance fighter murdered by the Germans in 1944 in the Utrecht Fort de Bilt. Earlier it became clear that in 1936 Riezebos was director of the editor-in-chief of the Protestant Bredasche Courant, a newspaper that was banned in October 1941. Riezebos says goodbye to his readers in that last song.

“Now that we are writing these last words, it is as if we are standing at the departure of a last train. Everything is still moving and noise fills the sky, but slowly for those who are looking for it, the red light in the dark evening and then it is quiet and empty. Our press is now running now, but if the last is the latter, it will not be stated anymore. rust. “

They are poetic words, but that is hardly surprising. Riezebos is also known as a not without merit. They are sentences in which hope sounds. Hope the moment the Germans have disappeared and he can spend his newspaper again. What he does not know is that he will never experience that moment himself. The Bredasche Courant only appears on January 2, 1945, more than four months after his execution and funeral in Breda.

The newspaper of Noord-Brabant and Zeeland in Breda, the Catholic competitor who appears the entire war and is a mouthpiece for the Germans, is present at the funeral of Riezebos and devotes a small piece to it in their columns. “We also lose a pleasant, cordial and ever -helping colleague with the passing of Mr. Riezebos. As a journalist, he was a member of various associations and for years cared for the art criticism in his magazine. We have always been able to appreciate his open and chivalrous character.

Fidelity
Remarkable that the newspaper does not hide its admiration for Riezebos. The Germans are still in charge in Brabant and they consider the director editor-in-chief as a traitor. One that they have picked up a few months earlier for an offense where the death penalty is on. Riezebos appears to have stopped his press at all. However, it is not the Bredasche Courant, but resistance newspaper Trouw (also Protestant) that he is now running. And that was reason for the occupier to pick him up and drove it to Fort De Bilt where he was killed on August 23, 1944, just a few weeks before the liberation of Breda at the end of October that year.

The bitterly about the whole story is that the ‘wrong’ Catholic newspapers such as the Dagblad van Noord-Brabant and Zeeland and the Brabants Nieuwsblad continue to appear immediately after the liberation. The Dagblad van Noord-Brabant is under a different name, namely the voice.

The management decides to take over the title of a former resistance newspaper to bypass an appearance ban because of the pro-German attitude. Only after an investigation does the Bredasche Courant get permission to fall back on the mat, while it was previously decided that newspapers that were removed before January 1, 1943 could appear immediately. And they are not happy with that, as can be read in the first copy from January 2, 1945. “It can therefore be surprised that the Bredasche Courant, whose management and the whole staff have never fallen short of patriotism and who have risen a lot, has not been released before.”