Letters from TU student in the resistance

Letters from TU student in the resistance

A new Dutch book about former TU student Piet Groenewege will be published on 1 May. He was in the resistance during World War II and was executed at the age of 22.

The book ‘Boerenzoon in het Resistance’ focuses on letters that Groenewege wrote to the home front during his student days. He described, among other things, that he had to get used to living in rooms in the city and that his studies demanded a lot from him. He couldn’t keep up going to the club with other students and his health was ailing.

In 1938, Groenewege started studying chemistry at TU Delft, which was then still called Delft University of Technology. In 1940 he exchanged that training for a study in mining engineering. At the start of the Second World War, he became active in the ‘Binnenlandsche Strijdmacht’ (O.D./’Ordedienst’) in Amsterdam. He was arrested on July 4, 1941, and sentenced to death in April 1942, after which he was shot. Since 2020, his name can be found on a memorial stone at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Science, along with those of other TU people in the resistance.

The Ordedienst was involved in, among other things, sabotage of German train connections and telephone cables. “The most important task, however, was to collect intelligence about the enemy in order to send it to England. The Dutch government and Queen Wilhelmina had settled there in exile”, can be read in an earlier edition of the TU about Groenewege and other TU people in the resistance. The book will be released on May 1 at Kick Publishers.