Luit Thoma (80) from Winschoten and his daughter Adrie will lay a wreath on May 4 during the national commemoration on Dam Square. Luit’s father was executed by the Germans in 1943 after a strike.
It is May 4, 1943. In Harkstede, a group of Germans is sitting in Café Staalstra. They drink gin. They just did a terrible thing.
strikes
The Netherlands is under the spell of the April-May strikes. All over the country, people are on strike. They protest against the Arbeitseinsatz, which stipulates that young men in Germany have to work. When Hanns Albin Rauter hears about the strikes, he becomes furious. The SS boss takes a decision: anyone who participates in the strikes will be shot without mercy.
The Forest Flower
Ynto de Boer is then head of the police in Groningen, Friesland and Drenthe. He hears that fifteen employees of potato starch factory De Woudbloem have stopped working. On May 3, the Ordnungspolizei enters the village in search of the strike leaders. The brothers Hermanus and Eisso Kleefman are arrested and put in a police car. Later Egbert Thoma (then 26) is also arrested. The men are taken to the Scholtenshuis on the Grote Markt in Groningen, the headquarters of the Sicherheitsdienst. They spend the night there. Luit Thoma is then six months old.
Lieut Thomas
The 80-year-old son of Egbert Thoma now lives in Winschoten, together with his wife. His daughter, Adrie Kiwiet, speaks. Her father talks hard about the war. “He had a gas station in Winschoten. If Germans arrived there around this time, he just walked away.”
The relatives do not know what exactly happened in the Scholtenshuis. “But it was not good,” says Kiwiet. Hundreds of resistance fighters were tortured and murdered in the Scholtenshuis.
The Drij van Woudbloem
Singer Jan Henk de Groot from Hoogezand wrote the song De drij van Woudbloem in honor of Luit Thoma, Eisso Kleefman and Hermanus Kleefman. On Sunday, April 30, it was sung for the first time in the potato shed of factory De Woudbloem.
Shot
A day after the arrest, the three men are taken out of their cells. They have to get into a van that drives to Woudbloem. Once there, the Germans call together as many people as possible. At five minutes past four, the three van Woudbloem are shot dead on the site of the potato starch factory.
Their colleagues have to put the bodies in the car. “And there it was said to them: ‘There lie your comrades. Take this as an example, because if it doesn’t work, it won’t eat either’”, writes a spectator in his diary. In the end, 175 civilians are killed during the strikes.
After the execution in Woudbloem, the Germans drive to Harkstede. They have a drink and move on. The bodies of the three men from Woudbloem are never found. They are believed to have been buried in a mass grave in Appèlbergen.
Wreath on the Dam
The massacre happened exactly 80 years ago. Luit Thoma grew up without a father. All he has left is a porcelain piggy bank, a copper tobacco box and the hiking club documents.
Every year, on May 4, he goes to Woudbloem with daughter Adrie Kiwiet. There they lay a wreath. “I see my father’s grief,” she says. “I see how difficult it is for him and that touches me enormously.”
This year, father and daughter will lay a wreath on Dam Square. Because it is 80 years ago, the Committee 4 and 5 May wants to pay attention to the April-May strikes. Viavia came to the committee in January with Adrie and her father. “The highest tribute he can give his father.”
He’s in the front row on Thursday night, she right behind him. When it is their turn they walk forward together, she does the last bit. “You have to go up a flight of stairs and bend down. It’s hard for people that age. In addition, the committee wants to pass on the commemoration to the next generation.” After the wreath-laying, they drink coffee with the king and queen.
In the book ‘Buried in an unknown place’ researcher Truus de Witte writes more about the April-May strikes.