The betrayal of Weert: the resistance dilemmas of Bob Jesse and his daughter Katinka

As a seven-year-old child, Katinka Jesse told her parents: she no longer needed to live. Her mother panicked. Her father, 25 years older than his wife, remained calm and only said: “That will improve.” The reason for the daughter’s death wish was not asked.

More than fifty years later, Katinka Jesse (59) thinks she suffered from the heaviness that always hung in the house. Father was sweet and often joked, but clearly carried something dark with him. “A child senses that. It was in the little things. Never stop in Germany on the way to a holiday destination. My sister and I were not allowed to play with the ashtrays in the car doors, because father could not stand the sudden sound when the lids closed.”

Jesse wrote down what was going on with him in the recently published book My father, a traitor? How a resistance fighter lost control over his own life. She was told the story herself when she was nine years old.

Father Bob, the child of a Jewish mother, told his daughter about his resistance work during the occupation years. He had managed to save many lives by organizing hiding places alone. But in 1944 he was arrested, imprisoned and tortured until he finally broke through. The key moment came when his interrogators threatened to break the bones of two Jewish children in front of their mother and him.

Under duress, Bob Jesse leads the occupation authorities to a meeting of the national hiding organization. That action, later known as ‘Weert’s betrayal’, led to the arrest of eight leaders from the Limburg resistance. Seven of them died in concentration camps or before an execution squad.

Resistance members then attempted to liquidate Bob Jesse. They reached Jesse’s Amsterdam apartment and managed to injure him. More than thirty years later, he lifted his shirt and showed his daughters the bullet scar on his left side. Two others were injured: a man present and Jesse’s first wife, Dientje, also active in the resistance. The attack left her paralyzed in both legs.

All details were new to the two girls, even the existence of Dientje. Katinka Jesse: “I don’t know why he said it. Perhaps on his own. Perhaps on the advice of a resistance friend or a therapist. Possibly he wanted to arm us against a moment when we would suddenly be confronted with his past elsewhere.”

A big secret

In any case, it felt like a lot for little Katinka. From now on she carried her father’s heaviness with her. Plus a big secret. “My father taught us that we were not allowed to talk about it to anyone. For him, the fallen fellow resistance members weighed more heavily than the lives saved, he said. “I should have taken my life before that meeting. Or had it taken,” he said to his daughters. That gave me the feeling: am I allowed to be here? Because if he had really taken his life, I would never have existed.”

Katinka Jesse’s adolescence therefore had something very lonely. “I had a tendency to close myself off. And when it came to anything about the war, I withdrew completely.”

After the liberation, Father Jesse had to answer for the betrayal. Katinka Jesse: “The judge found the facts so extensive and complex that they could not judge them as lawyers. My father was therefore released from prosecution.”

Zoom in

His mental burden did not decrease, it actually only became heavier in the long run. Father Jesse’s physical condition also deteriorated. Only during contact with Selma van der Perre, a Jewish resistance woman who was also arrested because of his ‘betrayal’ but survived the concentration camp, did life seem lighter for a moment, says his daughter. “They became friends. And later I also became friends with her.”

Bob Jesse died when Katinka was fifteen. She only broke the promise not to tell anyone a few times after that. A best friend was told everything and the few long-term relationships she had, including her current husband. “It never really helped. It was only with Mathijs, with whom I have been together for 27 years, that telling the story provided some relief. He suspected that something was up. While I told my story, we held each other tightly. That helped.”

Criminal law lecture

When Katinka was seventeen, her mother was visited by a law student who was interested in Bob Jesse’s story. Copies of his post-war file were placed on the table. In between is a photo of Jesse, taken in Weert in 1945: he is chained to the hood of a jeep. Around his neck a sign with the text: “I AM THE TRAITOR OF WEERT. MURDERER OF: NAUS, BERIX, BR. COMMON MERKX.” The words ‘traitor’ and ‘murderer’ are underlined.

Katinka Jesse was present at the conversation and saw the photo. “That is really terrible. Because of what was done to him, but especially by the ladies in the background with their disapproving grins.”

Most spectators at the time had simply muddled through the war. Any idea of ​​what real resistance work meant was missing. Let alone that they understood the dilemmas Bob Jesse had faced. For his daughter Katinka, the photo remained on her retina. She still has a hard time looking at it. “It’s not in my book and I don’t want it in this article.”

One event left even more traces a few years later. As a law student, Katinka Jesse attended a lecture by criminal law professor Constantijn Kelk in the spring of 1988 about grounds for exclusion from punishment, reasons that can cause a judge to waive a sentence. As an example he cited the case of a resistance fighter arrested during the war. Although he had betrayed people, he was also the victim of severe torture. Jesse felt himself stiffen. “Tears welled up in my eyes. I couldn’t get any more notes on paper. I just wanted it to stop. Afterwards I ran outside, where I cried a lot.”

The war continued to affect Jesse after that. “I’m not a pushover, I always take life a little more seriously. Sometimes it also made me combative. I now get quite excited about the way Israel runs its house and about the extreme right.”

The silence about her father weighed on Jesse. At the same time there was self-doubt: was she not showing herself? Didn’t she appropriate her father’s story?

Great social commitment

Her father’s story not only caused persistent mental struggles, but also a great social commitment. “My choice of study and later commitment to environmental law stem directly from my background. I want to do good and make amends.”

Thirty years ago, Jesse was diagnosed with MS. Almost six years ago she was also hit by a bus. She was left with non-congenital brain damage. Paid work has therefore not been possible for some time. Instead, she does volunteer work: previously for the benefit of refugees, from soon on for the sustainability of Utrecht. “Again that pursuit of a better world.”

In 2019, Jesse received an invitation to lay a wreath on behalf of the resistance together with Selma van der Perre during the May 4 commemoration on Dam Square. She found it exciting, but she accepted it. The invitation felt like recognition. “The video for the accompanying TV broadcast was too short to tell my father’s complex story. But it did contain a phrase along the lines of ‘…And the debt they took with them’.”

The very elderly Van der Perre, who lived in London, had written an autobiography. Jesse helped her find a publisher. That worked. In passing, Jesse was asked whether she should also write about her father.

That idea had to mature. “My father thought a book was terrible. It was instilled in me not to talk to anyone about it. It was in a different time. In 1976 people thought about the occupation more in black and white terms. And with the publicity of all files in the Central Archives for Special Jurisprudence, everything is now coming out. Then it might be a good thing if I bring the story out in a careful manner.”

Zoom in

My father, a resistance hero?

The research for the book deepened Jesse’s view of her father’s resistance work. He became active there soon after the occupation and was involved in almost all possible resistance activities.

“And a letter I found was a relief. A resistance fighter wrote almost half a century ago that my father was to blame, but so was the resistance. My father had become overwrought from all the resistance work in 1944 and therefore stopped. But the resistance could not spare him and persuaded him to start again. Two weeks later the fatal arrest followed.”

“The title of the book is now My father, a traitor? But writing it made it clear to me that there are hardly any resistance fighters who came through the war without fault. Given my father’s background and the enormous amount of resistance work he did, you would also use the title My father, a resistance hero? can use. During the book presentation, after long doubts, I dared to say this openly for the first time. I think ‘resistance hero’ is a difficult word. Because it is so one-dimensional and absolute.”

In the meantime, the woman from Utrecht tries not to transfer her trauma to her own two children. “I told them their grandfather’s story the evening before the wreath-laying ceremony with Selma. My son was devastated and my daughter threw herself on the couch crying. But they seem to deal with it well and just talk about it with others. They can do that. I was raised with the idea that that was not allowed.”

“They are very involved in life. They just take it a little less seriously. But maybe it will become an issue later. Because it is something that they get.”

Jesse himself thinks about the war every day. “It’s really in my body. There was something therapeutic about writing the book, it made it all a little less difficult.” She does not know whether it is conceivable that from now on days will pass without war. “I will answer that later.”

At least she talks about it more easily. “It is actually not surprising that the story comes out smoothly. I have been telling it to myself for years. But the nice thing is that I can also do it physically. That was not possible a few years ago. Then the trauma literally closed my throat.”

Give a gift





Part





Email the editor