queerasfact: Pride 2022 17/30: Willem ArondeusWriter and artist Willem Arondeus was a part of the Du
queerasfact: Pride 2022 17/30: Willem ArondeusWriter and artist Willem Arondeus was a part of the Dutch resistance during WWII, including the distribution of fake registration cards to Jewish citizens. In an effort to prevent these from being revealed as forgeries, Willem was involved with a plot to burn down the Amsterdam civil registry office, successfully destroying 800,000 identity cards. The group was subsequently betrayed and most of them were sentenced to death. Before his execution on July 1st, 1943, Willem’s final request to his lawyer was to publicise that he and two of the other arrested men, Sjoerd Bakker and Johan Brouwer, were gay, along with his final words: “Tell the people that homosexuals are no cowards.”The group responsible for the attack, including these three men, have been recognised as Righteous Among the Nations, the title given to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust, by Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center.learn more with queer as fact: a queer history podcast [Image: black-and-white seated portrait of Willem looking into the camera c.1921; black-and-white close-up on Willem’s face and upper torso, wearing a suit] -- source link
#queer history#gay history#willem arondeus