Today, exactly 77 years after the liberation of Assen on April 13, 1945, the key to the House of Detention in Assen was handed over in the Drents Museum. At the end of 1944, the cell doors of the prison were opened with this key during a resistance raid. 31 resistance fighters who had been captured by the Germans ran towards their freedom. They all survived the war.
The robbery came just in time. It turned out afterwards that the resistance fighters would be executed on December 12. After the robbery, Freek Bastiaanse, one of the members of the vigilante group, keeps the key.
Freek Bastiaanse is not his real name. He has adopted a pseudonym because he is in the resistance. Jo Bastiaanse, as the resistance fighter is really called, buries the key after the robbery, his daughter Roelien Bastiaanse tells. “There were actually two keys. They took them with them to ensure that the Germans could no longer go into the cell. After the war, he dug up the key again and put it in the house.”
The key has always been family owned; until today. 77 years after the everywhere, the Bastiaanse family hands over the key to the Drents Museum. “The key has been with me and my parents for the last sixteen years. We personally don’t do anything with it. It’s just in the closet. That’s why we decided to donate it to the museum,” says grandson Bas Johannes Bastiaanse.
The grandson, who is named after his grandfather Jo, talks proudly about his grandfather: “My grandfather liked to tell his story about the robbery and the war. He wanted to show: be happy with your freedom. I think he was also very is happy with the fact that the key is now given a place in the Drents Museum.”
That spot is in the museum’s historical collection. The pieces in this collection have everything to do with the history and history of Drenthe. “It is an iconic object. There is no other object that tells so much about the history of the resistance in Drenthe,” says Harry Tupan of the Drents Museum. “We have virtually nothing in our collection that tells the resistance story of the war.” The key to the robbery at the House of Detention can be seen from the autumn of 2023.