It is now a beautiful residential area, but more than seventy years ago this area was much rougher, with sandbanks, streams and hedges. During the Second World War, the new Amberlint district in Limmen was an ideal place for resistance fighters to quickly hide from the Germans. People like Hannie Schaft, Jan Bonekamp and Jan Brasser stayed in the village, a plaque now commemorates this.
It was a special morning for 78-year-old Nelson Bult. Together with Mayor Mans of the municipality of Castricum, he was allowed to unveil the plaque in the new district. About a hundred meters away is the house on Pagenlaan where he grew up and where his parents Trijntje and Jan offered resistance fighters and Jews a safe roof over their heads.
Even before the war broke out, the Bult family offered shelter to people who were unsure of their lives in Germany. Later the family came into contact with Jan Brasser from Uitgeest, who later became commander of the Zaans Resistance. As a result, the house on Pagenlaan quickly became a hiding place for resistance fighters.
“Germans regularly came to the door”, son Nelson Bult tells NH Nieuws. “It also sometimes happened that Hannie Schaft was sick in bed upstairs and that my mother lied to the Germans that she had mumps. That was a contagious disease at the time and so they decided to turn around.”
Pistols in pram
When resistance fighter Jan Bonekamp was seriously injured after a failed assassination attempt on a wrong police officer, the family was advised to flee as well. Because there was, of course, a chance that he might have let something go. Yet the family did not want to budge. ‘We will stay here, because the animals have to be looked after’, Father Bult is said to have said.
Nelson did experience the resistance up close when Jan Bonenkamp and Hannie Schaft hid their pistols under the mattress of a pram at night. The next morning Nelson was asleep in it. You can see how that ended in the video below (text continues).
Place where Hanny Schaft, among others, hid, commemorated with plaque – NH Nieuws
Son Nelson only realized later that his parents were doing life-threatening work. “I once asked my mother, but she told me that you just roll in it. It was of course lefty soup and if it had gone wrong, I would not have been here anymore.”
Nelson is pleased that there is now a place where not only the resistance fighters are commemorated, but where the Bult family is also honored for their dangerous work. “You have to see it as a tribute to all those families who have offered help to people in hiding or people from the resistance. It should have happened much earlier, of course, but better late than never.”
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