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Willem Johan Cornelis Arondéus (Naarden, August 22, 1894 – Haarlem, July 1, 1943) was a Dutch visual artist, author and resistance fighter during the German occupation. Among other things, he was active in the Council of Resistance, with which he participated in the Attack on the Amsterdam Population Register. Because of his arrest, he ended up in front of the firing squad on 1 July 1943. After the war he posthumously received the Resistance Cross and the Yad Vashem award. Source: WW2 Biographies Network War Resources.

“Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards!”, shouted painter and resistance fighter Willem Arondeus just before he was executed. Arondeus published the resistance newspaper 'Brandarisbrief', forged identity cards and was behind the attack on the Amsterdam population register.

Willem Arondeus has always been an outsider. At the age of twenty, in 1914, he already openly admitted his homosexuality. At that time, even in the artistic circles he was in, that was a big step too far for many. Arondeus was a versatile artist. He was a painter, graphic designer, illustrator and tapestry weaver. He received major commissions, including from the Province of North Holland. From 1935 he devoted himself to writing. In 1938 and 1939 he published his first novels and a biography about the painter Matthijs Maris.

In 1941 he started publishing the Brandaris Letters. In the illegal pamphlets he called on artists to boycott the Dutch Chamber of Culture. Artists and journalists had to join in if they wanted to continue practicing their profession. That was under strict control of the Germans.

Arondeus' also belonged to the core of the Personal Records Center (PBC), the resistance group engaged in counterfeiting and distributing identity cards. His graphic skills came in handy. Some forgeries nevertheless came to light when the Germans compared the identity documents with the official copies from the population register. His resistance group planned an attack on the Amsterdam population register with the aim of destroying the copies. He took the lead with fellow resistance member Gerrit Jan van der Veen.

On Saturday evening, March 27, 1943, the group broke into the building of the population register unseen. It took them little effort, because tailor Sjoerd Bakker had made a police uniform for everyone. The doctors sedated the security guards with injections and placed them outside on the sidewalk. Then the resistance fighters set fire to various places in the building. Five explosions followed. Four hours later, firefighters had the fire under control. Solidarity firefighters caused a lot of water damage. The action had less impact than hoped, because identity cards were difficult to burn (15% was lost). The action was a source of inspiration for resistance groups in other parts of the country.

A few days later, almost the entire group was arrested. Also Willem Arondeus. In the mock trial that followed, he tried to take all responsibility. He wanted to keep the others out of the wind as much as possible. It earned him a lot of respect, also from the Nazis, but to no avail. In the end, Arondeus was sentenced to death with a large part of the group.

Sex between two men was already punishable under paragraph 175 of the constitution in Germany before the Nazis took power. After the seizure of power, gays were declared enemies of the state. Berlin in particular was a city with an active gay movement and there were cafes and magazines published. Around 1935, homosexual contact was increasingly punished, meeting places were closed en masse.
At least ten thousand men were arrested between 1933 and 1945 because of their sexual orientation. The detainees largely ended up in the concentration camps, where they had to wear a pink triangle as a mark.
The focus of the Nazis was on the contact between men, women were not taken into account. During the occupation in the Netherlands, homosexuality (between men) was also banned here and the number of arrests on this ground was limited in comparison to Germany. Arrest on this ground was a major scandal for the detainee and his family during this period of history.

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