Gerard Groeneveld presenteert Tante Bertha

Gerard Groeneveld

With a beautiful certificate and a facade stone, Bertha Margaretha van der Hof-Kooijman was lauded after the war as 'the mother of the Rotterdam resistance'. In illegal circles, the heroic reputation of 'Aunt Bertha' seemed irrefutable, especially because in the last year of the war an extremely violent gang of resistance fighters used her villa on the Mecklenburglaan as a base for robberies and liquidations. Even the local authorities praised her dedication to the illegality. But soon cracks appeared in the image, which she had mainly polished up herself. Aunt Bertha was said to have embezzled money and goods that Jewish compatriots had given her for safekeeping during the occupation. She was also said to have promised Jews to help them escape to Switzerland or England, only to then hand them over to the Germans. Less than two years after the liberation, the mother of seven children was behind bars, only to be acquitted a few years later. In Aunt Bertha. The fall of a Rotterdam resistance mother, Gerard Groeneveld unravels the double life of Aunt Bertha and the truth finally comes to light.

Gerard Groeneveld (1956) conducts research into cultural and military collaboration, Nazi propaganda and war photography during the Second World War. He has written about this in NRC and de Volkskrant, among others.