Walraven van Hall Wallraven van Hall ( Amsterdam , 10 February 1906 – Haarlem , 12 February 1945 ) was a Dutch banker and resistance leader during the occupation of the Netherlands in World War II . Having been born in a well known influential Dutch family , Van Hall initially studied to become an officer in the merchant marine . However after having worked for some years as third mate he was rejected because of his eyesight after passing the exam for second mate . Not being able to work in the merchant marine , he moved to New York in 1929 . His brother , the future mayor of Amsterdam , Gijs van Hall , who already worked at a bank , helped him get a job there with a Wall Street firm . Having thus been introduced to banking , he returned to the Netherlands and became a banker and stockbroker . After the Germans invaded Holland in 1940 , a fund was established to help families of merchant - sailors ( who were stranded abroad when war broke out ) . Van Hall was asked to help set up the Amsterdam chapter together with his brother Gijs . Because of his banking experience , he was able to provide funding with the help of guarantees by the Dutch government in London . Soon the Germans began taking anti - Jewish and forced labour measures and resistance against these measures increased . Van Hall expanded his fund - raising activities for all kinds of resistance groups and he became known as the banker of the resistance . One of the ways in which Van Hall raised funds for the resistance was the " robbing " of the De Nederlandsche Bank ( Dutch National Bank ) . With the approval of the Dutch government - in - exile , the Van Halls managed to obtain as much as 50 million Dutch guilders . According to Nout Wellink , president of the bank in 2010 , this figure is comparable to half a billion Euros nowadays . Together with his brother , Van Hall falsified banknotes and changed them in the bank for the real notes . With these , paper money was collected . This was done behind the back of Rost van Tonningen , president of the bank and a notorious member of the Dutch Nazi party National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands ( NSB ) . Another way of collecting money was borrowing from wealthy Dutch people . As a proof of their investments , they got a worthless old stock . The number was registered . After the war they could get their money back in exchange for the stock paper . In 1944 , Walraven was the leader of the NSF ( National Support Fund ) and he was the coordinator of the Kern ( nucleus ) and the Driehoek ( triangle ) a cooperation of various resistance groups . The NSF supported a variety of resistance groups and underground papers like Trouw , Het Parool and Vrij Nederland . Prime minister Schermerhorn called Van Hall a key figure of the Dutch resistance . Wallraven had various nicknames in the resistance movement : he was called the Olieman ( the oilman ) for his abilities to lubricate the friction between resistance groups . Other names were Van Tuyl , Ome Piet ( Uncle Pete ) and Barends . His personal courier was Hanneke Ippisch , author of the book " Sky " . Her job was to find a safe meeting place every Friday for the resistance leaders . On 2 January 1945 , the meeting place was given away by a member of the resistance who had been arrested the day before and who wrongly believed the members of the meeting would know he had been arrested and wouldn ' t attend the meeting . Although the Germans had a vague idea there had to be somebody who coordinated the finances for the resistance , they never found out it was Van Hall . Walraven van Hall was executed in Haarlem as revenge for the death of a high - ranking police officer . After the war , he was buried in Overveen on the Erebegraafplaats ( Honorary Cemetery ) . Van Hall was posthumously awarded by the Dutch government with the Dutch Cross of Resistance ( Verzetskruis ) . The United States awarded him with the Medal of Freedom with Gold Palm . In honor of his deeds in the resistance a monument was erected in the fall of 2010 near the Nederlandsche Bank at the Frederiksplein in Amsterdam .