Woeste Hoeve
Encyclopedia
De Woeste Hoeve is a place in the Netherlands
near Apeldoorn
which is remembered for an incident in the Second World War when, during the night of 6 March 1945, Dutch resistance
fighters shot the Nazi Chief of Police, SS General Hans Rauter
.
The shooting occurred accidentally when a group of six resistance fighters were on an assignment to capture a German truck so that they could steal food intended for the Germans. They chose Woeste Hoeve because of its remote location.
Dressed in German uniforms, the resistance group thought they could hear the truck approaching and went out on the road to halt the vehicle. However, it turned out not to be a truck but Rauter's car. When they realised their mistake, they shot the three people inside, Rauter, an SS officer and the driver. They thought they had killed all three and ran off.
Rauter, who managed to survive the attack, was discovered a few hours later and taken to hospital in Apeldoorn where he recovered.
As a result, huge reprisals were taken under the command of SS Brigadefuhrer Dr Karl Eberhard Schöngarth
on 8 March. At Woeste Hoeve itself, 116 men were rounded up and shot on the spot and another 147 Gestapo prisoners were executed at a number of other locations.
Rauter was later captured by the British who turned him over to the Dutch. He was sentenced to death on 4 May 1948 and executed by firing squad at Scheveningen on 25 March 1949.
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
near Apeldoorn
Apeldoorn
Apeldoorn is a municipality and city in the province of Gelderland, about 60 miles south east of Amsterdam, in the centre of the Netherlands. It is a regional centre and has 155,000 . The municipality of Apeldoorn, including villages like Beekbergen, Loenen and Hoenderloo, has over 155,000...
which is remembered for an incident in the Second World War when, during the night of 6 March 1945, Dutch resistance
Dutch resistance
Dutch resistance to the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands during World War II can be mainly characterized by its prominent non-violence, summitting in over 300,000 people in hiding in the autumn of 1944, tended to by some 60,000 to 200,000 illegal landlords and caretakers and tolerated knowingly...
fighters shot the Nazi Chief of Police, SS General Hans Rauter
Hanns Albin Rauter
Johann Baptist Albin Rauter was a high-ranking Austrian Nazi war criminal. He was the highest SS and Police Leader in the occupied Netherlands and therefore the leading security and police officer there during the period of 1940-1945...
.
The shooting occurred accidentally when a group of six resistance fighters were on an assignment to capture a German truck so that they could steal food intended for the Germans. They chose Woeste Hoeve because of its remote location.
Dressed in German uniforms, the resistance group thought they could hear the truck approaching and went out on the road to halt the vehicle. However, it turned out not to be a truck but Rauter's car. When they realised their mistake, they shot the three people inside, Rauter, an SS officer and the driver. They thought they had killed all three and ran off.
Rauter, who managed to survive the attack, was discovered a few hours later and taken to hospital in Apeldoorn where he recovered.
As a result, huge reprisals were taken under the command of SS Brigadefuhrer Dr Karl Eberhard Schöngarth
Karl Eberhard Schöngarth
Eberhard Karl Schöngarth was a German Nazi, appointed SS-Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der Polizei on Himmler’s orders in 1943. He was a war criminal who perpetrated mass murder and genocide in occupied Poland during the Holocaust.Schöngarth was born in Leipzig, Saxony...
on 8 March. At Woeste Hoeve itself, 116 men were rounded up and shot on the spot and another 147 Gestapo prisoners were executed at a number of other locations.
Rauter was later captured by the British who turned him over to the Dutch. He was sentenced to death on 4 May 1948 and executed by firing squad at Scheveningen on 25 March 1949.
External links
- Memorial Woeste Hoeve (Apeldoorn-Arnhem) from the Hins' World War II collection. Retrieved 14 April 2008.