The Second World War started early for Rein Boomsma, former player of the Dutch national team and Sparta. After Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939, Boomsma was appointed commander in Jaarsveld, where the fortress ‘Holland’ was located. When Germany invades the Netherlands eight months later, Boomsma and his men do not last long. They withdraw to Rotterdam and Boomsma, together with other soldiers, founds the Rotterdam branch of the Ordedienst – the resistance organization of the Dutch army. In 1942 he is betrayed. He then has one year to live.
Rein Boomsma is one of the many Dutch football players who did not survive the Second World War. Sports historian Jurryt van de Vooren and several colleagues have been researching the victims for years. They have so far found the names of 2,700 Dutch footballers who died in the war. Among them were, in addition to Boomsma, eighteen (former) players of the Dutch national team, two former national coaches and two presidents of the KNVB football association.
During the war years, sports became more and more popular. In 1930, 180 thousand people played sports, in the middle of the war (1943) there were 429 thousand and immediately after the war more than 600 thousand people practiced a sport, according to figures from the Netherlands Olympic Committee (now NOC-NSF). Football has always been the greatest. Sport provided distraction and a sense of community – although the occupying forces also sometimes used sport for propaganda purposes.
Nevertheless, the Second World War left a hole in footballing Netherlands, as it happened in almost all parts of society. Because it was not only former players of Orange who did not return, but also semi-pros, amateurs, administrators and bartenders. Although very, very occasionally there was a miraculous return to the fields.
The goalkeeper of Meppel
On 11 May 1940, a day after the German invasion of the Netherlands, the club magazine of the football association MSC in Meppel was published. In the city the bridges have been blown up, barricades have been erected, German soldiers are walking around. There is glass and rubbish everywhere. “Everyone has taken note of it under breathless tension,” writes the chairman.
At the time of the publication of the club magazine, MSC goalkeeper Willem Kel is fighting the Germans who are taking his city. A hopeless battle. He is taken prisoner of war, and then released. It could have stopped there for Willem Kel. He is not Jewish, like many other MSC members. At that time, he had little to fear from the occupying forces. Yet he will live in relative peace for only two more years.
It is March 21, 1942 when Rein Boomsma, the former Orange international, is transferred to the ‘Oranjehotel’ in Scheveningen. The Germans imprison many people in this Scheveningen prison for resistance or disobedience. More than 250 prisoners will be sentenced to death during the war and shot on the Waalsdorpervlakte. Many stayed in Scheveningen for a while, before being put on a train to concentration camps in Germany.
While Boomsma waits in the Oranjehotel for what is to come, the fiancée of MSC goalkeeper Willem Kel – the Jewish girl Carla de Leeuw – moves from Meppel to Amsterdam in the summer of 1942. She can get work in the capital. Kel often visits those summer weeks. He regularly spells a yellow Star of David on his jacket, even though he is not Jewish himself. They are happy together. After initial objections, Carla de Leeuw’s family has agreed to their marriage. They want to get married as soon as possible.
Less than two months after she left for Amsterdam, on August 4, Carla de Leeuw answered a call for ’employment’ in Germany. She gets on the train to Westerbork. Several eyewitnesses heard Willem Kel say during that period that he “will not abandon her”. “If they get her from Westerbork, I’ll go with them. I don’t care where to.”
Shortly after his fiancée arrives in Westerbork, Kel van Meppel cycles to the camp. He comes into contact with an acquaintance of Carla de Leeuw and discovers that she will be removed a day later. On August 7, Kel mixes with the prisoners who are gathering at the train to Auschwitz. He ends up on the train with 989 others – as one of the few non-Jews who voluntarily allows himself to be taken along.
That same week, a note is delivered to his family in Meppel. “William with me,” it says. He threw it out of the vehicle at Sappemeer. Willem Kel will be missing for a long time. MSC’s membership lists for the years 1943-1944 and 1944-1945 state that he resides ‘abroad’.
After three quarters of a year in the ‘Oranjehotel’, Rein Boomsma is transferred to Utrecht via Amersfoort. He then ends up in Neuengamme, the concentration camp near Hamburg, in northern Germany. Sparta archivist Rene Schouten found his camp map. Boomsma’s number: 21346.
It is not known what exactly happened in the camp with the former right winger of the Dutch national team. On May 27, 1943, at 6.30 am, his name is entered in the Neuengamme book of the dead. Cardiac Insuffizienz – heart failure – is listed as the official cause of death. Schouten: “He had to work himself to death.”
The liberator of Rotterdam
The fate of Willem Kel and Rein Boomsma was not yet known in the Netherlands, when the war for Feyenoord player Joop van der Heide had yet to begin. On the brink of the war, April 21, 1940, he had made his debut for the Dutch national team. He made a living, as best he could, as a painter. Until the Razzia of Rotterdam, the largest raid of the German occupier during the Second World War in the Netherlands.
On 10 and 11 November 1944, between 52,000 and 70,000 men from Rotterdam and surrounding municipalities were arrested and deported. They were put to work in Germany, although historians suspect that the Germans mainly wanted to prevent the young men (between the ages of 17 and 40) from resisting with the Allies approaching. Feyenoord player Joop van der Heide was one of those men.
It went silent for months after that. But when Rotterdam was liberated on May 8, 1945, a reporter from The Free People suddenly something up. His name appears in a clipping of that day, sent by a relative of Joop van der Heide. “Among the Canadians, who were part of the police forces, we suddenly saw a familiar face. A doppelganger of Joop vd Heide, the well-known Feijenoord left back? No, it was indeed vd Heide!”
That same day, Van der Heide can also be heard on the radio. In a fragment, later found by his relatives and historian Jurryt van de Vooren, he tells what happened to him. After his employment, he escaped and returned to the Netherlands from Germany. There he joined the Canadian troops in the east of the country. They could use a painter.
Van der Heide advanced with the Canadians to Rotterdam. There he was among the first cars that entered the Coolsingel and liberated the city.
The family of Joop van der Heide cherishes the audio fragment, although they see his war story mainly as the history of a very normal boy from Rotterdam. A great-nephew of Joop van der Heide tells about other family members who were also put to work in Germany and about his grandfather who fought in the Dutch East Indies. Those events actually impacted the family more.
Joop van der Heide concluded his radio contribution on Liberation Day with the words: “I hope to play a good game for Feyenoord again soon.” He kept that promise. Shortly after the war, on June 30, he played for the Bondseltal, the unofficial national team. They played a match against an English team, with 52,000 spectators in the stands. The Dutch lost 0-3. Many players still suffered from malnutrition.
The death of that other Orange international, Rein Boomsma, only became known after the war. A fellow inmate who survived knew of his death. The Neuengamme book of the dead in which his name is written was also found. It is one of the few documents from the German concentration camp that has not been destroyed. His former club Sparta is working on a book about victims of the Second World War. More than three hundred Spartans died – many were in the resistance. Archivist Rene Schouten: „A lot of Spartans lost a lot during the bombardment of Rotterdam. As a result, they often joined the resistance, which was of course dangerous.”
The war, says Schouten, has turned Sparta into a social club. At the time, the club had an emergency hospital, food supply, an orphanage and strong ties to the Red Cross. Schouten: “We still help poor people in the neighborhood and our social background is important. To understand and appreciate that, it is important to know the war stories, such as Rein’s.”
‘Finally certainty’
The death of Willem Kel is probably only announced very late at the Meppel football association MSC. In December 1953 his name appears in the MSC’er club magazine. “It seems that there is finally certainty about the fate of our former member Willem Kel. In the Dutch Government Gazette of 29 October his name appears on the list of victims of the concentration camps […] Willem actually chose that ending voluntarily, by wanting to accompany his Jewish fiancée on her way into the unknown in the ghettos of Eastern Europe.”
Twelve years ago, MSC made history again. The club then existed for a hundred years and an anniversary book was made, with a lot of attention for the Second World War. “Many of our members did not survive the war,” says chairman Arjan Jonkers.
Jonkers believes it is important to continue to tell the stories of the deceased members: “The young people must also understand that our 112-year existence does not only have highlights.”
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of April 30, 2022
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