Valkenburg resistance The Valkenburg Resistance was the resistance movement in Valkenburg , Limburg , Netherlands , during World War II . Most of the activities were related to helping people who had gone into hiding for various reasons . Going into hiding was dangerous , but so was keeping people in hiding . Especially hiding United States soldiers was risky because they had no sense of the danger and had a reputation of making too much noise . Hiding Jews was even punishable by death and one third of the people who hid Jews did not survive the war . Origin . When World War II broke out the Netherlands intended to remain neutral , as they had been in World War I . But when Nazi Germany nevertheless invaded the Netherlands in 1940 , at first little changed and life went on pretty much as normal . There had always been Germans in this region so close to the German border and the Germans expected that the Aryan Dutch would ' fall in line ' . But then the Germans started imposing their ideology on the people , limiting people ' s rights , forcing people to work for them ( Arbeitseinsatz ) and deporting Jews and others . These and other factors caused a growing group of people who wanted to resist to the occupation . At first through individual acts like non - cooperation . But activities like helping people who had gone into hiding ( e . g . to escape the Arbeitseinsatz ) , shot down pilots and escaped POW ' s needed more organisation . Small groups united into the LO ( Landelijke Organisatie voor hulp aan onderduikers - National Organisation for help to people in hiding ) , which divided the province of Limburg in ten districts under Jacques Crasborn . Another organisation was the ( assaultgroup ) or KP . The KP would obtain goods needed for the people in hiding and the LO would then distribute them . In spite of the name the KP was not necessarily violent , but violence was sometimes needed in ( mostly nocturnal ) activities like obtaining identification carnets and ration cards and sometimes even German uniforms , which were used for raids . The LO in Limburg started in Venlo in February 1943 under teacher Jan Hendricx ( pseudonym Ambrosius ) . Another important figure was L . Moonen ( pseudonym Ome Leo - Uncle Leo ) , secretary to the bishopric , who used his episcopal contacts to make the Limburg resistance an ordered organisation . Valkenburg . Head of the Valkenburg LO was Pierre Schunck ( pseudonym Paul Simons ) . Notable members were Harry van Ogtrop and Gerrit van der Gronden . But many more people helped , more or less frequently , such as civil servants Hein Cremers and Guus Laeven , who , at the end of the war , ' lost ' the population records when the Germans wanted to put all men between 16 and 60 at work digging trenches . Pierre Schunck came into contact with the resistance because he lived across the street from a cave where people hid . When chapelain Berix Schunck visited there , he asked Pierre if he could get some clothes for the people in hiding . Which he did . But he went further by improving the living conditions ( electricity and food ) . And in the end he decided to get more people involved and set up a resistance organisation , which hid a total of 150 people . At one point there even arrived a group of 100 people from the district of , where there had been problems . Most of these could be hidden at several farms . Pierre Schunck ' s pseudonym ' Paul Simons ' was a result of the at the time rather common custom to stitch one ' s initials into clothing and handkerchiefs , so the initials had to match . The fact that he chose a Jewish name is rather peculiar , though . Apart from helping people in hiding , other activities took place , like raiding a store of radio equipment in Klimmen , a train full of eggs , and a dairy plant in Reijmerstok for a ton of butter . And hiding valuables from the Jesuit cloister in Valkenberg . One of the people who did this was Pierre Schunck , who owned a laundrette and simply hid the goblets and such under the laundry and put his children on top . At a hospital in Heerlen a whole floor was ' hidden ' from the Germans to hide ( and treat ) crashed pilots and other people in hiding . The many marl mines in South Limburg were also ideal hiding places because they needed a guide to navigate them ( especially the ones in Maastricht have a very extensive system of corridors than has been used throughout history for this purpose ) . When Pierre ' s father Peter Schunck , who owned some land with entries to mines , where he knew people were hiding ( which he chose to ignore ) , was asked by the Germans to lead them into the caves , he took them to a section he knew was dangerous and poked his walking stick in the ceiling , causing part of it to come down . Upon which he said he would not enter there . To which the Germans agreed . The caves were also used to hide guns ( provided they weren ' t too damp ) and as shooting ranges . And to imprison ( possible ) traitors . There were also various other hiding places , such as the hide - out Pierre Schunck had created beneath his bath tub ( the old type on legs ) , which he , however , never had to use . At one point Pierre Schunck also had some rifles hidden in his laundrette . When one of his employees told the Germans about this and he was taken to The Hague for questioning , he played dumb and his good reputation saved him . The police sent a message to The Hague saying he was a respected citizen and because the rifles weren ' t found ( they had been quickly moved ) he was released . The raid on the distribution office . The ration cards were a means for the Germans to make it difficult for people to go into hiding , because they couldn ' t get any food . Young men who were to be sent to Germany for the ' Arbeitseinsatz ' had to hand in their ration cards . But one way around this was to either fake the cards or steal them . Some civil servants of the distribution office in Valkenburg ( including Willem Freysen ) managed to embezzle between 500 and 1000 complete sheets of ration cards per month , to be distributed among people in hiding . They even built up a surplus they gave to other districts . The manager of the distribution office had chosen to ignore this ( another example of passive resistance ) , but when he was replaced in 1944 , the scheme was found out and the ration cards were changed . An alternative solution was to have them printed in Amsterdam , but the printer ' s in Amsterdam was raided by the Germans . So a more ' aggressive ' approach was devised , also to wipe out traces of the embezzlement . Every night , an envelop with the keys to the vault ( among other things ) was handed over to the police for safekeeping . This envelop was sealed with stamps . Over time , enough stamps were collected ( from the waste basket ) to make a fake envelop with fake signature and keys . The KP had already stolen a car of the Wehrmacht from a garage in Sittard ( plus some barrels of petrol ) , repaired it and hidden it in Valkenburg . So one night , when the fake envelop was handed to the police , this car , some German uniforms and the real keys were used to empty the vault at the distribution office . By chance , a new 2 month supply had just been sent in and the loot was enormous , filling twelve burlap bags . At first , these were hidden in a farm in , but when the Germans started to search through farms , they were brought back to Valkenburg . The officer of the guard , who had participated in the scheme , went into hiding , thus drawing the attention to himself , giving the others freedom to go on with their work . Liberation . When the allies approached Valkenburg in September 1944 there were several days of shooting , with the result that when the allies entered the town on 14 September it was deserted ; everyone had fled into the caves . But two men stepped out onto the street , one of them Pierre Schunck , the other a youngster from The Hague who was in hiding with him . They had made contact the day before and now told the 19th US army corps where the Germans were to be found - in a hotel near the only remaining bridge over the river Geul , at the Wilhelminalaan , which the Germans kept intact as long as possible to let their troops retreat . A column of jeeps approached and Pierre was put on the hood of the first one . Later he found out that the soldier behind him had orders to shoot him if anything went wrong because they still didn ' t trust him . They were going to conquer the bridge , so Pierre sent off a few locals to tell people to stay indoors and not to start cheering . But the Germans were informed by a collaborating local and blew up the bridge just before the liberating soldiers had reached the bridge ( creeping from tree to tree ) , by igniting the explosive charge that was already in place . So now Valkenburg became a front line and the troops were delayed for three days . The army division got orders to wait until Maastricht was conquered , which happened two days later . So on 17 September Valkenburg was finally on the right side of the front and fully liberated . The people could finally leave the caves , which was needed because during these few days food had run out and the hygienic conditions had become difficult due to the overcrowding of the caves . In those days in the caves three children had been born and an old man had died ( of natural causes ) . After the war . Members of the Valkenburg resistance agreed to keep their activities a secret after the war , so as not to brag . This posed a problem for historian Loe de Jong when he wrote his famous " Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog " , because he couldn ' t get any information . So he concluded there had been no resistance there . Ironically , the only person who was willing to talk was someone who had been on a death list of the resistance , but ultimately not executed . But the personal archive of Pierre Schunck proves the contrary , with photos , real and fake ' Ausweise ' ( identifications ) and ration cards , illegal stencils , a file on Jewish victims and the like . For his work in the resistance , Pierre Schunck was later awarded the Verzetsherdenkingskruis . Years later , during a wake at the Margraten cemetery , a US soldier started asking around for someone named Paul Simons , but almost everyone had forgotten that name . When he finally found him it turned out he was the soldier who sat behind him with a rifle pointed at his head . He had had sleepless nights because of this and was happy to find Pierre Schunck in good health . This soldier was Bob Hilleque from Chicago , the only member of the A platoon of the 119th regiment who was still alive at the time . Pierre and Bob subsequently became good friends .