Tag Archives: Albert Dijkema

Another Side of Dam Square

Building in Dam Square with SS logo on it

Identified as in public domain: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/536491374335302561/

I’m doing this by eye, but I’m pretty sure that this building is on Dam Square on the Royal Palace side.  The SS sign you see was designed to attract Dutch recruits, particularly after the invasion of Russia, when some were motivated by the idea that they could fight the communists. Nazi imagery like this was commonplace in major public places after the invasion in 1940.

Siert Bruins could have been recruited by this office on the Dam.  He is a Dutch-born SS volunteer who was accused in 2013 of murdering Aldert Klaas Dijkema, a Dutch resistance fighter, as a reprisal.  However, the judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence.  Earlier, Bruins was convicted in absentia by a Dutch court for several other murders after the war, but he had already fled to Germany and taken German citizenship.  Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal found him living under a false name in a German village, and he was convicted there of two other murders and imprisoned for 5 years.

As I researched my novel, I learned that reprisal killings were all too common.  When the Resistance took some strong action, the Nazis often killed someone, or in some cases, a whole group of randomly assorted people.  No wonder my heroine is afraid for her life.