In March 1945, the hamlet of Woeste Hoeve was caught centre stage in a horrific and bloody drama. The highest-ranking Dutch SS officer, Hanns Rauter was seriously injured during a random attack, and his retaliation was cruel:263 prisoners of war were executed throughout the Netherlands, 117 of whom were executed in Woeste Hoeve. This was the largest mass execution in the Netherlands during the Second World War.
The bizarre thing about the attack on Rauter is that it was not intended that way at all. The Apeldoorn resistance needed a German truck to intercept a German meat transport. But when the resistance fighters came out of their ambush at Woeste Hoeve in the night of 6 to 7 March 1945, they suddenly saw a grey-green BMW passenger car. A gunfight ensued in which all occupants of the car were killed, except for one man. In the dark, the resistance fighters had not seen that it was Rauter, nor that he was still alive.
Rauter was found some time later and transferred to a hospital. Because he assumed an attempt on his life, he immediately ordered the worst imaginable retaliatory measure: the shooting of 300 Todeskandidaten, prisoners who had been sentenced to death for various reasons. In the end there were 263, the directors of the various prisons could not provide more. And they weren’t all Todeskandid either.
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