The Silence of Laren the Baroness and Her Jews in Hiding
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The Silence of Laren The baroness and her Jews in hiding The article | Introduction | Dutch version Introduction In 1964, Hans van Straten1 published the book Moordenaarswerk (Murderer's Work). Based on extensive literature research, he describes more than one hundred high-profile Dutch murder cases from 1844 to 1963. One of these cases is the double murder of the Jewish Horn brothers. In the night of 11 to 12 July 1942, they were violently killed in or near the villa in Laren (North Holland), where they had been in hiding since late 1941. It was a case of robbery homocide: the brothers were killed by, or on the orders of, their host, the widow Helena Louise Schuiringa-Otto. The exact course of events remains unknown: on August 31, 1950 the widow committed suicide. Only a year after her death, the mortal remains of the brothers are found. Buried in a pit in the garden of her former villa. Van Straten releases a reprint of Murderer's Work in 1990. The story of the murder in Laren prompts the journalist Jeroen Terlingen to explore that story in depth. He then has lymph node cancer. He's looking for a subject that won't be immediately overtaken by current events, if medical worries take him out of the running for a few weeks. Also, working on his article and the associated travel allows him to escape the medical circuit. He completes his article during the week he is declared cured. For his research he can use the chapter written by Van Straten in 1964. In addition, Terlingen received help from a retired police officer from Laren, who had "kept" the keys to the police station. He secretly made copies of relevant documents during the evenings and weekends. Public prosecutor Wassenbergh, who was in charge of the murder investigation in 1951-1952, had, against regulations, not offered the closed file for destruction, This enabled Terlingen to study photos, reports and interrogations in Laren in 1991 and to transcribe them 1 Hans van Straten. Dutch journalist and writer (1923-2004). Jeroen Terlingen. The baroness and her Jews in hiding. Vrij Nederland 1991/Droog Magazine 2021. Page 1/34 where necessary. In 1991, Jeroen Terlingen spoke with people who had personally known either the victims or the main suspects. He was able to check many of their statements, even though these were about cases that happened decades earlier, with the official reports from 1951-1952. All of these witnesses have since died and the police files have disappeared. All of this makes Jeroen Terlingen's 1991 account the most reliable account of the events in Laren, which took place from about 1934 through 1952. With thanks to Jeroen2 and Jim Terlingen.3 Bart FM Droog, Eenrum, 3 June 2021. 2 Jeroen Terlingen (Utrecht 1943). Journalist, writer, film maker and teacher. https://jeroenterlingen.nl/ 3 Jim Terlingen (Utrecht, 1965). Journalist and researcher. https://jimterlingen.nl/ Jeroen Terlingen. The baroness and her Jews in hiding. Vrij Nederland 1991/Droog Magazine 2021. Page 2/34 The article The Silence of Laren The baroness and her Jews in hiding By Jeroen Terlingen, Vrij Nederland, 1991 It was not the fine fleur of Laren who sat at the well-stocked table of Frau Baronin von Schuiringa von Otto during the war years. Her neighbor, the NSB'er4 Woudenberg, Telegraaf editor-in-chief J.M. Goedemans,5 NSB-mayor Knipscheer: they found her, baroness or not, too vulgar. But the ordinary inhabitants of Laren - the policeman, the grocer, the veterinarian - enjoyed the banquets. When the Horn brothers from Cologne, wealthy German Jews, took shelter with the baroness, not much seemed to change at first. But how could a wealthy German widow with many NSB friends actually offer shelter to Jewish refugees? And how did Siegmund and Karl David Horn find out that they had ended up at a very bizarre hiding place? The reconstruction of a war drama in Laren. 4 NSB = National Socialistische Beweging; the major Dutch Nazi party.. 5 De Telegraaf was (and is) one of the major Dutch newspapers. Jeroen Terlingen. The baroness and her Jews in hiding. Vrij Nederland 1991/Droog Magazine 2021. Page 3/34 Portrait of the Horn family, circa 1936. Front row Siegmund, Jakob Leopold, Martha (Bernhard's wife), Bernhard and Karl David. Back row the two sons of Martha and Bernhard, Karl and Erich. Horn heirs' collection. On December 6, 1941, two Jewish businessmen fled from Cologne to the Netherlands. Karl David and Siegmund Horn went into hiding with Frau Baronin von Schuiringa von Otto (43), who lived in a villa on the Rijksweg in Laren. The Horn brothers were rich. Henk Beuker, actually a wallpaper upholsterer for the Baroness, had smuggled their furniture, paintings and thirty crates of porcelain, gold, silver and ivory objects to Laren in his truck on 3 November 1941. At their friend Juliane Gutzeit's house in Cologne, Karl David and Siegmund - seventy and sixty-three years old, both small in stature and set - left twenty-seven and a half kilograms of gold and silver jewelry. On their way to the Gooi, they stopped in Nijmegen, where they checked with director B. Coster the contents of a chest that, as soon as Hitler came to power, they had deposited at the Amsterdamsche Bank. The chest had been purchased from a hardware store next to the bank and contained jewelry and hundreds of forty-thousand guilders in cash in various currencies and securities. Before moving in with the Baroness, Karl David and Siegmund stayed with her friend Bertha Rijnders-Reneman6 in Baarn for four days. When their rooms were prepared, they went into hiding in Laren. Although, hiding... 6 Lubertha Rijnders-Reneman (1881-1961); Stichting Groenegraf.nl, Baarn, (accessed 06-06-2021); https://groenegraf.nl/hetverhaalvan.php?id=8011 Jeroen Terlingen. The baroness and her Jews in hiding. Vrij Nederland 1991/Droog Magazine 2021. Page 4/34 Neighbours remember their daily walk. One waved his walking stick as if he were a tambour-maître, the other whistled a tune. Veterinarian J. van Raadt,7 who treated Frau Baronin's Pekingese Mounty, saw them regularly taking a taxi to the hairdresser. Siegmund, the youngest and fittest of the two brothers, took Dutch lessons in Hilversum and travelled with the Baroness to the Mak van Waay art auction in Amsterdam,8 where part of their antique collection was sold for fl 10,797.39 on 29 May 1942. The brothers were overjoyed when visitors wanted to play cards with them, but who played skat? They often entertained themselves for hours with solitaire. In July 1942 Karl David and Siegmund Horn suddenly disappeared from Laren. They were still there on Saturday the eleventh, when they watched how garden boy Gijs Gieskens dug a deep pit in the garden of the Baroness to hide her copper from the Germans. After that vet Van Raadt brought them by car to the border town Putte-Stabroek. They thought it safer to flee to Switzerland. Their stay in the Netherlands had lasted exactly 217 days; long enough for Siegmund Horn to love the Baroness so much that he drew up a deed of gift with the help of the local police sergeant F. Vreeswijk9: if anything should happen to him or his brother during the remaining years of the war, liebster Helena would inherit their possessions. Only a few weeks later the Baroness received the Todesschein (death certificate) of the Horn brothers. They had been arrested at the Belgian- French border. In Laren it became known that Karl David had taken a handful of veronal tablets.10 Siegmund tried to flee and was shot. Although Frau Baronin von Schuiringa von Otto had already experienced some disturbing things in her life, she was again inconsolable. Close to the Czech border in the former East Germany lies the small town of Marienberg in the foothills of the Ore Mountains (Erz Gebirge). Once, when silver and uranium were mined here, it must have been a prosperous place. Now it presents the bleak picture of an average ex-GDR town: neglected houses, broken streets, a Wartburg wreck here and there.11 7 = Dr. Hendrik van Beek. 8 Auction house located at Rokin 102, Amsterdam. The company still exists in 2021: https://www.makveilingen.nl/historie-mak/. 9 = Police Sergeant Johannes Frijters, born on 18-09-1893 in Fijnaart en Heijningen. On 29-11-1916 he was married in Rotterdam to Catharina Cornelia Vermunt (1893-1970). He died on 08-04-1978 in Laren, where he was also buried. Birth record West-Brabants Archive, Marriage records Stadsarchief Rotterdam and Noord-Hollands Archive. Militia register (for son Cornelis Josephus) Noord-Hollands Archive. Family Johannes Frijters / Catharina Johanna Vermunt (F20038). Family tree of Laren ancestors. Laren, https://www.larensevoorouders.nl/ntg/familygroup.php? familyID=F20038&tree=tree1 [accessed 27-05-2021]. 10 According to rumours that apparently still circulated in 1991. 11 Wartburg was a well-known GDR car brand. Jeroen Terlingen. The baroness and her Jews in hiding. Vrij Nederland 1991/Droog Magazine 2021. Page 5/34 When the mines were exhausted, so was nature. At this moment the only green colours in Marienberg are Russian uniforms, but these too are about to disappear. The year 1843 is chiselled on the façade of the local bookshop. Neither the owner, nor his father, nor his grandfather ever saw any reason to record local history, to collect old postcards, or even to publish a map. After the Wende, the director of the Verkehrsamt was given the task of designing a brochure in case an unsuspecting tourist ended up in Marienberg.