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A ‘wasp’s nest’, a ‘hotbed of infection’ that must be eradicated. For example, in March 1934 the newspaper De Telegraaf wrote about crime in Oss, especially by the infamous ‘Gang van Oss’. “It is a national interest and our national honor,” the newspaper said. In 1933 and 1934 the press described the situation in the ‘dark Catholic south’ in increasingly stark terms.
Justice felt the pressure. Something had to be done about the crime that had gripped the Maasland for more than ten years. And it got worse: in early 1934, a robbery or other serious crime was reported almost every day. With the sad conclusion of the robbery of the Verhoeven brothers in Oijen in May of that year, about which the podcast Murder on the Dijk recently appeared on Omroep Brabant.
Listen to ‘Murder on the Dijk’ here or search for it in your favorite podcast app
That murder in May 1934 caused much social outrage. Two innocent elderly brothers who were so violently beaten in the middle of the night. It became a turning point – partly due to pressure from the written press: the crime heralded the end of the ‘Bende van Oss’.
Until the early 1930s, the national press did not pay much attention to crime in Oss. This changed rapidly from 1933 onwards. In the spring of 1934, ‘Het Volk’ wrote: “In Oss, with its 15,000 inhabitants, more people were violently killed in 12 months than in Amsterdam, the city of three-quarters of a million.” The police were accused of ‘weak measures’ which, according to the newspaper, made things ‘worse by the day’.
The term ‘Chicago on the Maas’ took hold. Oss was even written about internationally. The French daily ‘Paris-Soir’ published an article about it under the headline ‘Le sang sur les tulipes’ – blood over the tulips. It also led to numerous opinion articles, for example from the Den Bosch prison psychiatrist J. Casparie, who raised the possibility of ‘social hygienic castration’ in De Telegraaf, a measure that was discussed at the time but extremely controversial.
“If it were up to me, they would immediately go to a concentration camp.”
Mayor Jan Ploegmakers of Oss saw the problem, although according to him it only affected a few families on the Schaijks Veld. His hands itched to take it hard. In an interview he said: “If it were up to me, they would immediately go to a concentration camp – regardless of whether they had done anything or not. We all know them.” The quote dates from 1934, years before the Second World War, but illustrates how great social pressure was to intervene.
But the mayor was especially annoyed by the press. “I would like people to restrain themselves a little and be content to report only what is reported by the police or by me.”
Yet Ploegmakers could not ignore it: the anarchy in his municipality had to be curbed. It was agreed with the judiciary that if something were to happen again, the state police, municipal police and military police would work together in unison. In Oss, raids would immediately be carried out on suspicious persons.
That is exactly what happened after the murder of the brothers in Oijen. It led to two arrests that same night, which were the beginning of the end for the ‘Gang van Oss’. A dark chapter in the history of Oss was closed more than a year later with the sentencing of approximately 70 Ossen residents to more than 300 years in prison and the definitive end of a criminal network that had plagued the Maasland for more than a decade.
