12-17-2022, 09:05 AM
No Concertgebouw Orchestra, tulips, or Gouda cheese where he is going!
Jacob Luitjens (18 April 1919 – 14 December 2022) was a Dutch collaborator during World War II. He was nicknamed the terror of Roden, as he was active in and around Roden in the Drenthe Province. He was born in Buitenzorg, Dutch East Indies.
After the war, on 10 September 1948, Luitjens was convicted and sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment. He evaded this punishment by fleeing to Paraguay, aided by Mennonites,[1] using the name "Gerhard Harder". He emigrated to Canada in 1961, where he became an instructor in the Department of Botany at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Students in the department knew him as an almost completely silent "ghost-like" man.
The Frisian Jack Kooistra, also known as 'the Frisian Simon Wiesenthal', managed to track down Luitjens in 1992. Luitjens was stripped of his Canadian citizenship and was deported to the Netherlands. At a court in Assen, he was convicted and sentenced to an imprisonment of 28 months. He served this term until March 1995 in a prison in Groningen. Afterwards, the Canadian government forbade his return to Canada. Luitjens was without a nationality thereafter. Ian Kagedan of B'nai Brith Canada characterized the deportation as part of an ongoing "quest" to bring Nazi war criminals to justice.[2]
Luitjens granted an interview in January 2022, at the age of 102.[3] He died on 14 December 2022, at the age of 103.[4]
Jacob Luitjens (18 April 1919 – 14 December 2022) was a Dutch collaborator during World War II. He was nicknamed the terror of Roden, as he was active in and around Roden in the Drenthe Province. He was born in Buitenzorg, Dutch East Indies.
After the war, on 10 September 1948, Luitjens was convicted and sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment. He evaded this punishment by fleeing to Paraguay, aided by Mennonites,[1] using the name "Gerhard Harder". He emigrated to Canada in 1961, where he became an instructor in the Department of Botany at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Students in the department knew him as an almost completely silent "ghost-like" man.
The Frisian Jack Kooistra, also known as 'the Frisian Simon Wiesenthal', managed to track down Luitjens in 1992. Luitjens was stripped of his Canadian citizenship and was deported to the Netherlands. At a court in Assen, he was convicted and sentenced to an imprisonment of 28 months. He served this term until March 1995 in a prison in Groningen. Afterwards, the Canadian government forbade his return to Canada. Luitjens was without a nationality thereafter. Ian Kagedan of B'nai Brith Canada characterized the deportation as part of an ongoing "quest" to bring Nazi war criminals to justice.[2]
Luitjens granted an interview in January 2022, at the age of 102.[3] He died on 14 December 2022, at the age of 103.[4]
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.