Walking route War and liberation
This route takes you past several key locations for Brummen during World War II.
Sights are numbered on the route image:
3. The Old Post Office: War crime English paratroopers: An open truck carrying 25 captured English paratroopers reduced speed near the post office. Two men jumped off the truck. The German guards panicked. A young SS man ran around the wagon emptied his magazine on the defenceless POWs, 20 bullets. Under much clamour and shouting, his colleagues restrained the other men. A hero's role was played by the Brummen GP, who calmed the Germans down. One prisoner of war, Major Anthony Hibbert, escaped. Four Englishmen and one German were dead. Many witnesses, residents of Brummen, were paralysed with terror. Now the Old Post Office serves as a hotel.
1. Gaarkeuken: Hunger...
This route takes you past several key locations for Brummen during World War II.
Sights are numbered on the route image:
3. The Old Post Office: War crime English paratroopers: An open truck carrying 25 captured English paratroopers reduced speed near the post office. Two men jumped off the truck. The German guards panicked. A young SS man ran around the wagon emptied his magazine on the defenceless POWs, 20 bullets. Under much clamour and shouting, his colleagues restrained the other men. A hero's role was played by the Brummen GP, who calmed the Germans down. One prisoner of war, Major Anthony Hibbert, escaped. Four Englishmen and one German were dead. Many witnesses, residents of Brummen, were paralysed with terror. Now the Old Post Office serves as a hotel.
1. Food pantry: Famine winter 1944. Every day, several tubs of potatoes were peeled and soup or a meal made for residents and especially evacuees from Arnhem. After all, they had no vegetable garden.
7. Concordia: Emergency hospital: The hospital in Zutphen was inaccessible due to the closure of the IJssel bridge. The village hall Concordia was set up as an emergency hospital. The theatre hall was divided into two with a bulkhead. On the left the men, on the right the women, a total of 15 patients. Under the billiard table the deceased, who unfortunately did not survive the war. Today, Concordia serves as a cosy Village Hall.
14. Hiding address Major Anthony Hibbert: Major Hibbert was the only para who managed to escape after the drama at the post office. Hibbert was able to hide in a closet on the first floor, the door of which had been made invisible.
11. Klein Engelenburg: Command Post NBS: With the Liberation, the Underground shed its camouflage and revealed itself as the new authority. The NBS, Dutch Domestic Forces, was under the command of Prince Bernhard. Not to be confused with NSB, which collaborated with the Nazis.
17. House on the railway: The railway between Arnhem and Zutphen was used extensively by the Germans to transport troops and equipment. The railway was bombed at least five times, breaking the windows of the house at Hazenberg number 2. The family was evacuated to Gravenstraat.
4. Groot Engelenburg: execution of resistance fighters: Brummen's greatest war drama is the execution of eight resistance fighters by the notorious Jagd-Kommando Pieters. On 6 April 1945, this Kommando landed in Brummen to fight the 'hotbed of resistance'. Arrests were made with a heavy hand, suspects were brutally interrogated. People were drunk, threatened and tortured. The Canadians approached and SS chiefs decided that the worst tortured should not survive. Their testimonies would be too incriminating. The eight people were shot dead on the decking of the pond of Groot Engelenburg.
5. Groot Engelenburg: Haircuts: Shortly after the war, so-called 'Kraut girls' were given a haircut across the country. In Brummen, eight women were rounded up. The haircut was done by an evacuee from Arnhem, Brummen hairdressers refused.
13. Huis 't Hammeler: From his house 't Hammeler, resistance fighter Lout baron Van der Feltz carried out resistance work. He prepared the daring action Pegasus-1. On the night of 22-23 October 1944, over 150 English pilots, including Major Hibbert, were moved across the Lower Rhine to liberated territory.
9. Town hall: raid on the safe of the distribution office: In the middle of the night in May 1944, the Brummen Underground raided the safe of the distribution office. The outside was large, over 23,000 ration coupons. A big noose for the Germans. The perpetrators were not traced, the suspects did not budge.
8. Secret location for the Underground: Arnhemsestraat 27 served as an evacuation office but also as a meeting place for the Underground. What did they do? Picking up radios, putting people across the IJssel, delivering notes, listening to Radio-Oranje messages and typing them out on very thin paper, sheltering English paratroopers and pilots and channelling them to liberated territory.
16. Jewish drapery shop: Several Jewish families and Jewish people in hiding lived in Brummen. The family of the craft shop went into hiding in 1942 but was betrayed and arrested by the German SD.
2. Todthuis: All men between 14 and 60 years to shovel! To strengthen the IJssel Line, the men from Brummen dug trenches and tank trenches by hand and with shovels. For a wide field of fire they removed trees and hawthorn hedges. Gathering every morning at 6 a.m.
