The murder of brother and sister Jonas and Micky Schram – Advertising Rotterdam | The Havenloods

5 minutes ago

General
Read 26 times

Rotterdam – Traditionally, a number of books about the Second World War are published just before and in the month of May. Now that most of the archives have been opened, a continuously flowing source of information has been released. Historian Albert Oosthoek did not wait for this. For six long years he has been digging and digging for the truth surrounding the murder of two young Rotterdam resistance fighters, brother and sister Jonas and Micky Schram.

By Joop van der Hor

A double murder and not liquidation, because that would perhaps suggest that the resistance has dealt with two traitors and Oosthoek (1964), who lives in Rotterdam’s Zuidwijk, has serious doubts about this. Brother and sister Schram were killed on February 7, 1945 by members of their own resistance group on the basis of false suspicions, as Oosthoek found out. Oosthoek: “The perpetrators have never taken responsibility for this event. In my research I have come up against a wall of contradictions and false testimonies. Jonas and Micky were active participants in the armed resistance in and outside Rotterdam. Based on an extremely vague suspicion of pro-German contacts, sister Micky is arrested, interrogated and ultimately liquidated. Her brother Jonas tried to prevent the liquidation, with the result that he was also silenced. An interesting detail is that this is completely against the guidelines of the Domestic Armed Forces. Even more remarkable is that after the war those involved never spoke out about the case. After all, a double ‘mistake’ would mean the end of their good reputation.”

Read more under photo >

Photo: Jos Donker

Oosthoek, who works as a history teacher in secondary education, speaks in terms of resistance, betrayal, liquidations, intrigues and ultimately a deep cover-up with a heavy lid on it that was not even lifted when, after the liberation, the parents of Jonas (Johan) and Micky (Maria) Schram went looking for their children and encountered a wall of cold silence and systematic avoidance. As the research progressed, it gradually became clear to historian Albert Oosthoek that the resistance deliberately tried to keep the matter out of historiography, which ultimately failed, thanks to Oosthoek’s tenacity, as evidenced in this book.

Albert Oosthoek studied history at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and worked as a research assistant at the Rotterdam City Archives, the Information Office of the Dutch Red Cross and the National Archives in The Hague. His works include: ‘De Knokploeg Rotterdam-Zuid 1944-1945’ and ‘Pim Fortuyn and Rotterdam’.
The liquidation of Jonas and Micky Schram is available as a paperback and costs € 24.95.