The murder of resistance fighter Luit Kremer had major consequences. His fiancée Janny never recovered from the shock and spent the rest of her life in complete loneliness. And his sisters’ children also suffered lifelong consequences of his violent death.
Books have been written about Esmée van Eeghen. She was the mysterious woman who was the model for Paul Verhoeven’s film Black Book. But little was known about Luit Kremer, so RTV Noord wrote that he had “disappeared into anonymity”.
And that generated a lot of reactions, because the opposite turns out to be true. The suffering that Luit’s death caused is unimaginably great and lasted for years and generations.
The first to respond was Anne Doornbos, the village historian of the village of Een in North Drenthe, where Luit lived during the war and is also buried.
“Luit was the son of Master Kremer, teacher at the Christian school,” says Doornbos. “He was born in Uithuizen in 1920, but had moved to Een with his parents and he worked as a warehouse clerk in a store. Luit was already engaged to Janny Apotheker. His family was very principled Christian and from that belief Luit joined the resistance.” He did this under the pseudonym: Hans. That is also written on his grave.
Luit was a member of the North Drenthe gang and took part in armed robberies to steal distribution vouchers. But during such a robbery in Grootegast he lost his real identity card, the then ID card, and that was disastrous. “The Germans therefore knew who he was and started hunting him.”
Alex Helmantel, a son of Luit’s youngest sister Diny, also heard about the commemoration of his uncle Luit Kremer. His death also had an impact on him.
“The fact that Luit lost his identity card during a robbery caused great panic at his home,” says Helmantel. “My mother often told me what had happened: her mother (my grandmother), her eldest sister Riek and her brother Simon were arrested by the Germans and interrogated.”
“My mother was taken in by the local preacher and his wife, the parents of a friend. This prevented her from being arrested as well. Luit tried to go into hiding everywhere, but was recognized at the Emmen station by a land guard, an NSB member in German service. He shouted: ‘That’s Luit, get him!’ He recognized him because the NSB member also came from Een; they had grown up together.”
“It was terrible for Janny Apotheker, Luit’s fiancée and my mother’s sister,” says Ieke van Dijk. “I remember playing in the attic as a child and there was a locked room. There were the engagement gifts that Luit and Janny had received. But Janny never wanted to see them again.”
“The Germans had also arrested her to get information. She was bullied and called the ‘Bride of Luitje’. Terrible, because those Germans of course knew perfectly well that Luit was already dead, but Janny did not know that.”
Janny never got over the shock of Luit’s death. After the war she isolated herself more and more, also from her family. She was admitted to a rest home for a while, but that didn’t help either. She spent her life in solitude in a house in Eelde that was heavily polluted and neglected. She passed away in 1995.
Janny had to identify Luit in May 1945, together with Luit’s father, says Hessel de Walle. He wrote a book about Esmée van Eeghen and is the initiator of the memorial. “Esmée was found in the Van Starkenborgh Canal the day after the execution, but with Luit it took more than a week. They were both buried in Noorddijk. Luit anonymously, because they had no idea who he was.”
His father had been looking for him for a long time and they had hoped that the Germans had sent him to a camp in Germany, but that was not the case. The family lived in uncertainty for almost nine months before they could rebury Luit in Een in Drenthe.
“After the war, it was discovered that the Faber brothers and the German SD member Knorr were responsible for the execution. But why they shot these two resistance fighters and not many others remains unclear,” De Walle said.
“The death of her brother Luit had a major impact on my mother,” says Alex Helmantel. “She was unable to cope with it all her life and eventually, when she was already in her eighties, she went to therapy. Due to the loss of Luit, my mother was always extremely protective of us as children and it was very difficult for her to let go, and that had an effect on me.”
“I eventually ended up in a burnout a few years ago and then went to the place where Uncle Luit was shot dead. Then everything fell into place. It was a kind of closure for me. It is impossible to imagine how much suffering Luit’s death has caused,” says Helmantel.
Thanks to the Delpher newspaper archive, it is possible to find out what happened to the NSB fellow villager who betrayed Luit. “I found his obituary,” says Hessel de Walle. “He died in 1974 at the age of 58. There were pieces in the newspaper praising him.”
“He was a popular teacher, chairman of the local tourist board and all kinds of other organizations, and was even the founder of a museum. After serving a six-year prison sentence, he apparently worked hard to rehabilitate himself. And he actually got off mercifully with six years, because he was initially sentenced to twenty years.”
“In the end, very little, if you see how long the misery he caused continued,” said De Walle.
