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The Nieuwkapelle family
Greet Beijen, killed in a concentration camp |
For many people, the Second World War meant a break in their existence. This was especially true for Margaretha Henriėtte Sofie Beijen (7.6), who called herself Greet and was often called Greetje in family circles: she died in a German concentration camp. This page is dedicated to her.
Born and raised in Apeldoorn Greetje Beijen was born on July 24, 1919. She was a daughter of the electrical engineer Emil Karel Lodewijk Alexander Beijen (6.6) and Margaretha K.C. van der Borgh, who are mentioned on the previous page. She had two older sisters. Although her parents lived in Delft, Greetje was born in Apeldoorn. Her maternal grandmother lived there.
When Greetje was only six months old, her father passed away. Greetje's mother and her three daughters moved in with her mother in Apeldoorn. The photo of the three sisters was taken in 1925. Below is a copy of Greet's nationality certificate, which was issued by the municipality of Apeldoorn just after her fifteenth birthday.
To Wageningen and then to AmsterdamAccording to family tradition, Greet had a rather rebellious nature. After graduating from secondary school in 1937, she was determined to study at the Agricultural College in Wageningen (now Wageningen University & Research). Her mother then chose to move to Wageningen with her daughters.Greet passed the first part of the propaedeutic exam in Horticulture, but after two years she stopped her studies. She thought it was too theoretical and wanted to do something practical.  In 1939 she moved to Amsterdam. She attended a school for nursery teachers and worked for an insurance company.
In Amsterdam, Greet met Bernardus (Ben) Dictus. He was born in Velsen in 1916, lived with his parents in Amsterdam North and worked as an electrician. Against her mother's urgent advice, Greet married him in March 1942. On the left is their wedding card. After a short period at 230 Lijnbaansgracht, Greet and her husband were able to rent an upstairs apartment at 83 Egelantiersgracht. Caught by the GermansShortly after the young couple Dictus moved to Egelantiersgracht, a Jewish couple came to live with them: Hans and Rosa Samosch Bial. Although Ben Dictus stated after the war that it had been his initiative to include the Samosch couple, it seems much more likely that Greet took the initiative. Dictus had become a member of the fascist party NSB in 1941 and Greet had very different ideas.The presence of the Jewish couple must have contributed to the rapid deterioration of the relationship between Greet and Dictus. Later, Dictus claimed that Greet would have had an intimate relationship with Hans Samosch, that he could not accept that and that he had therefore moved back to live with his parents in Amsterdam North.
On January 19, 1943, the police raided the house on Egelantiersgracht. Greet and the Samosch couple were arrested. According to one of the police reports, the raid was triggered by an anonymous report that Jews were hidden in that house. It has not been proven, but it is very plausible that Dictus betrayed the two people in hiding and his own wife. You can read the preserved police reports by clicking on the thumbnails or the captions. The reports are shown in a separate window.
Two days later, the three detainees were handed over to the SD (Sicherheitsdienst).
"I'm sorry to cause you so much trouble"Greet Beijen was held captive in the detention center on the corner of Amstelveenseweg and Havenstraat in Amsterdam. On March 9, 1943, she wrote a letter to her mother:
Two weeks later, Greet's mother wrote back. It had not yet been possible to cancel the rent because the house was sealed by the police and the furniture could therefore not be removed. She had, however, submitted a request to have the seal lifted. The end of the letter read:
"I feel very strong mentally, I know what I'm in for"On April 15, 1943, Greet was transferred to the prison in Scheveningen near The Hague. On the way, she wrote a note to her mother on two small sheets of paper:
Died in RavensbrückA few weeks after her arrival in Scheveningen, Greet Beijen was transferred to the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp, north of Berlin. She arrived there on 18 May 1943. She died there on August 16 of that year, just 24 years old. There is no information about the cause of death, but it is known that numerous prisoners in Ravensbrück were directly murdered, died of starvation or disease or fell victim to medical experiments.Dictus sentencedBernardus Dictus was arrested in Friesland in early June 1945, a month after the liberation. He was charged with aiding and abetting the enemy. After his wife's arrest, he had joined the Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrkorps (NSKK). He stated that he had felt compelled to do so, as otherwise he would have been severely punished for hiding Jews. At the NSKK he mainly worked in France as a truck driver. He said that he deserted in September 1944 and then went into hiding in Friesland, together with a girlfriend who also came from Amsterdam North. In the meantime he had heard that Greet had died. In April 1945 he married his girlfriend.From June 7 to October 26, 1945, Dictus was in pre-trial detention. He was then released on parole. It was not until 1948 that Dictus had to stand trial before the tribunal in Amsterdam. It was stated that Dictus had been a member of both the NSB and the NSKK. The tribunal did not consider it proven that he had also been a member of the SS, although his file contained an SS tribal card with his name. He was sentenced to one year of internment minus pre-trial detention and disqualification from suffrage for life. However, he was not re-detained because the tribunal found this "currently undesirable", "although the above-declared misconduct of the accused certainly warrants it". Dictus' file also contained two documents in which the assumption is made that he betrayed his own wife and the Jewish couple. However, one of those documents says: "The betrayal will be difficult to prove, since the three victims are dead." He was therefore not convicted for betrayal.
The family papers were made available by Otto Munters from Amsterdam.
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