Het Parool

Het Parool

On 25 July 1940, the journalist F.J. Goedhart published his “Nieuwsbrief van Pieter ’t Hoen” (“Pieter ’t Hoen’s Newsletter”). With this newsletter, Goedhart aimed to provide the population with political information and to call for underground political action. Some time later, he came into contact with prominent members of the S.D.A.P., such as J.J. Vorrink, as well as social-democratic journalists. They wished to expand the newsletters considerably. This resulted, on 10 February 1941, in the publication of the first edition of Het Parool.

The socialist-oriented paper took a firm stand against the occupier, his collaborators, and sympathizers. In addition, Het Parool sought to encourage the population to resist all Nazi measures. German interests were to be obstructed as much as possible. From the end of May 1941 onward, the editorial board consisted of Goedhart, A.A.F. Althoff, former editor of Het Volk, J.J. Vorrink, Mr. J.C.S. Warendorf, J.J. Nunes-Vaz, a former editor of the A.N.P., and Dr. H.B. Wiardi-Beckman. The technical organization rested largely with Goedhart. After some time, he was assisted by the student H. Pelser and the A.J.C. member J. Stallinga. Vorrink and his party colleague J.H. Scheps traveled throughout the country to persuade their many contacts to take responsibility for the regional distribution of Het Parool.

The newspaper experienced rapid growth and appeared weekly, except for an interruption in 1942 and 1943, when it was published once or twice a month. From August 1941 onward, it was printed in Amsterdam. Initially, the costs associated with production and distribution were paid out of private funds. Vorrink and Wiardi-Beckman in particular succeeded in obtaining substantial financial contributions. Nevertheless, the financial position of the newspaper remained precarious for a considerable time. From the end of 1943, Het Parool received financial support from industrial circles, and in 1944 the N.S.F. assumed part of the financing.

The rapid growth in circulation and organization also had a downside. Vulnerability increased, and arrests were inevitable. The first major wave of arrests struck the paper in the autumn of 1941. At the same time, a conflict emerged between Goedhart and Vorrink. Goedhart, supported by Nunes-Vaz, took an extremely critical view of pre-war conditions in the Netherlands and considered the internal weakness of Western European democracy to be partly responsible for the outbreak of the war. Against Vorrink’s wishes, Goedhart wanted to express these views in Het Parool. The chairman of the S.D.A.P. wanted to place the emphasis on the struggle against Germany and the Nazis and had no desire whatsoever to engage in what he saw as “soiling one’s own nest.”

The conflict dragged on when, in mid-January 1942, Goedhart and Wiardi-Beckman fell into German hands on the beach at Scheveningen during an attempt to cross to England. Wiardi-Beckman died in captivity. Goedhart succeeded in escaping from Camp Vught in early August 1943. Immediately after the arrests, Vorrink, for security reasons, urged that publication of Het Parool be halted, but he encountered opposition from Nunes-Vaz and Warendorf. The S.D.A.P. leader drew his conclusions and resigned, together with his ally Althoff. Their positions were taken over by three young intellectuals: Mr. C.H. de Groot, Drs. W. van Norden, and Drs. J. Meyer.

In oktober 1942 werd de gehele Parool-redactie, afgezien van Warendorf en De Groot, gearresteerd. Warendorf, op wie de Duitsers fel jacht maakten en die bovendien joods was, achtte zijn bewegingsvrijheid dermate beperkt dat hij nog nauwelijks van nut voor de krant kon zijn. Hij besloot naar Engeland uit te wijken, zodat alleen De Groot met enkele assistenten overbleef.

In October 1942, the entire Parool editorial staff, with the exception of Warendorf and De Groot, was arrested. Warendorf—who was being fiercely hunted by the Germans and who was also Jewish—considered his freedom of movement to be so severely restricted that he could scarcely be of any further use to the newspaper. He therefore decided to flee to England, leaving De Groot alone with a few assistants.

On 29 October 1942, Warendorf traveled to Maastricht. There he contacted I. de Vries, the chairman of the Jewish Council, who referred him to Mr. E.R. von Geldern. He also visited E. Smits, a resistance member who later joined the pilot-assistance organization of J. Vrij, as well as an unnamed distributor of Het Parool. With the latter, he urged the recruitment of new personnel, thinking in particular of G.J. van Heuven Goedhart. Van Heuven Goedhart, a man with an impressive journalistic career, had previously contributed articles to Het Parool and, when approached, declared himself willing to join the editorial board. Smits referred Warendorf to his Belgian liaison J. Hanecourt in Uccle, near Brussels. At the border crossing, the Parool editor received assistance from Von Geldern and P. Schoenmaeckers from Rekem. He traveled by tram from Lanaken to Hasselt and then by train to the Belgian capital. Via Amiens, Warendorf reached Paris, where he stayed for several months and recorded his findings in writing. In May 1943, he traveled via Perpignan and across the Pyrenees to Spain. On 30 May 1943, he arrived in London.

Those who remained behind, De Groot and Van Heuven Goedhart, who jointly led the editorial staff, worked together extremely well. The circulation, which until then had fluctuated between 3,000 and 10,000 copies, rose in 1943 to more than 40,000 copies. After the April–May strike, the newspaper gained many new contributors. During the course of the summer, J. Meyer, W. van Norden, and F.J. Goedhart returned and resumed their work.

Once again, serious setbacks followed. As a result of the arrest of chief distributor J. Stallinga in December 1943, the Sipo was able, after thorough preparation, to deal heavy blows to the Parool organization throughout the country on 21 January 1944. Remarkably, the leadership escaped arrest. With the help of Vrij Nederland, with which close ties had existed since the second half of 1943, it proved possible—much to the frustration of the Sipo—to publish a new edition of Het Parool just a few weeks after the wave of arrests.

From the arrested Stallinga, the Sipo learned that Van Heuven Goedhart was one of the driving forces behind Het Parool. The search for him was intensified to such an extent that he could no longer appear in public. The editorial board instructed him to go to England in order to better inform the Dutch government in London about the Dutch underground. At the same time, he could take with him assignments from the Parool group, Vrij Nederland, and other resistance organizations. On 24 April 1944, Van Heuven Goedhart traveled to Sittard. There, at the railway station, he was met by an Amsterdam female student who took him to the schoolteacher H.H.A. Meijers in the Maas village of Kleine Meers. Meijers was a link in Swiss Route A, an intelligence and escape line used, among others, by Vrij Nederland. Meijers’s liaison J.G. Le Jeune, a Dutchman who had studied criminology in Leuven until 1942, provided Van Heuven Goedhart with a Belgian identity card and ferried him across the Meuse in a small rowing boat. The two then traveled by tram via Bree, Beringen, Diest, and Leuven to Brussels. There, Le Jeune handed the England-bound traveler over to E.S. Chait, a timber merchant from Rotterdam, who escorted him via Mons to Valenciennes. Via Paris and Toulouse, Van Heuven Goedhart reached the Pyrenees, which he crossed on foot. After 55 days, the journey came to an end and he reached London. On 12 July 1944, Queen Wilhelmina appointed him Minister of Justice in the Gerbrandy cabinet, a position he held until 23 February 1945.

The remaining members of the editorial staff learned from the waves of arrests and carried out a reorganization. During the remainder of 1944, the Parool organization was spared further serious setbacks. The newspaper devoted increasing attention to post-war issues, without, however, acting as a mouthpiece for the S.D.A.P.; the editorial board attached too much importance to its independence for that. Circulation rose to 60,000 copies. From then on, the paper was printed at several locations. Distribution took place via freight transport by rail, by inland shipping skippers, and by truck drivers.

From early September 1944 onward, a stenciled daily news bulletin appeared in Amsterdam, an initiative of the Parool editorial staff that was soon imitated in many other cities. The circulation of these bulletins quickly reached one hundred thousand. On 25 September, in the recently liberated city of Maastricht, the first freely printed issue of Het Parool appeared. The liberation of the western part of the country was still more than half a year away.

Although it did not prove possible to once again inflict deep blows on the organization, the Sipo nevertheless achieved some results. In March 1945, without knowing exactly whom they had arrested, they apprehended editor De Groot and the Amsterdam chief distributor H. Schippers. A few days later, the two were executed by firing squad, together with dozens of others, as a reprisal for the attack on Rauter.