Willem Arondeus was a Dutch artist, an openly gay man, and one of the most daring resisters of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. In 1943, he and a small group of collaborators broke into the Amsterdam Civil Registry and destroyed records that the Nazis were using to identify Jewish citizens for deportation. It is estimated their action saved tens of thousands of lives.
He was caught. He was executed. Before he died, he sent a message through his lawyer: "Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards."
This episode traces Arondeus's life - his early career as a painter and writer, his coming out in a more open pre-war Amsterdam, and the radicalization that turned an artist into a resistance fighter. We look at the specific courage it took to resist as a gay man in occupied Europe, doubly targeted, doubly at risk.
Arondeus was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 1984. He deserves to be remembered as something more specific: a queer man who chose other people's survival over his own safety, and who wanted the record to be clear about who he was when he did it.
Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/9Age9UmNXHk
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