Five UU students to get stumbling stones at Dom Square on Remembrance Day

The five UU students being commemorated are Trui van Lier, Truus van Lier, Kees van Lier, Isaac Cohensius, and Wim Eggink (see box).

Stumbling Stones (named Stolpersteine) are concrete cubes topped with brass plaques commemorating the victims of Nazism during the Second World War and the period leading up to it. They must be requested from the Stolpersteine Foundation. 

The German lecturer Doris Abitzsch is a co-initiator of the community engaged learning project Stumbling Stones: Making Victims of National Socialism Visible. The students who took part in it researched the lives of resistance fighters and nominated the five aforementioned students for a stumbling stone. 

Dom Square already has stumbling stones for the resistance fighter Jacques Bol, who studied art history; the Jewish Sociology Professor Jacob van Gelderen, who took his own life, the arts student Henny Mimi de Vries en medicine student Marianne Helena Blazer. The two women lost their lifes in Auschwitz.

“Students and academics were confronted with oppression, persecution and the choice between conforming or resisting the Nazi regime,” says Abitzsch. “Many lost their academic careers, their futures and even their lives. We must continue to tell their stories and keep the memory of the horrors of the Second World War alive, so that we remain aware of the dangers of hatred and intolerance.”

A logical place
The Utrecht University Hall, on Dom Square, is a logical place for the new stumbling stones. After all, the building houses the university war memorial, which bears the names of 169 students and staff members who lost their lives between 1940 and 1945. The small statue of Hermes in the corridor leading to the Aula also refers to the war. Before and during the war, that statue stood in the room where the central student records were kept. In 1942, students set fire to those records to prevent them from falling into the hands of the occupying forces and thus making students easily traceable for the German compulsory labour agency. Part of the statuette melted in the fire. After the war, it became a symbol of such acts of resistance.

The stumbling stones are situated next to the wall of Utrecht University Hall, close to the Pandhof entrance. The project aims to encourage people to pause and reflect on the far-reaching consequences of exclusion. The first stolpersteine in Utrecht were laid in 2010 by artist Gunter Demnig at the Central Jewish Orphanage, located at Nieuwegracht 92. There are now over 250 stumbling stones in Utrecht. One commemorates the Jewish professor Hermann Jordan at Frans Halsstraat. Across Europe there are 115,000 stumbling stones. 

The five new plaques commemorate:

Trui van Lier (1914–2002) studied History at UU, later switching to Law. She was a member of the board of the UVSV sorority, but put her studies on hold to run a daycare named Kindjeshaven on Prins Hendriklaan, where she temporarily cared for Jewish children aged 0 to 7. The children were brought there by students from the resistance and later taken to more permanent hiding places. This was dangerous work, as the Eastern part of Utrecht was teeming with Germans and members of the Dutch Fascist Party (NSB). Nevertheless, the daycare, founded by Trui and Jet Berdenis van Berlekom, managed to save the lives of some 150 Jewish children. If you read Dutch, a biography of her was recently published. Trui van Lier survived the war and lived to the age of 88.

Truus van Lier (1921 – 1943) was Trui’s cousin. She also studied Law and was a member of UVSV. She joined the resistance soon after the war began, smuggling weapons, taking people to hiding places, and secretly taking photographs of the Soesterberg Air Base. She is best known for her final act of resistance: assassinating the feared Chief of Police Gerardus Johannes Kerlen, a member of the Dutch Fascist Party. A statue of her now stands on the spot where she killed him. She was arrested in Haarlem shortly afterwards and taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany, where she was executed by firing squad.

Cornelis (Kees) van Lier (1912–1940) studied Mathematics and Physics. He was a member of the Utrecht Student Corps (USC) fraternity and held several positions on its executive committee. Before the war, he was an assistant to the professor of Theoretical Physics. During the mobilisation, he served as a sergeant in the Dutch Army's Motor Transport Corps. On 19 January 1940, he married Bernardina Daamen. The couple took their own lives in Haarlem on 14 May of that same year, as the Netherlands was overrun by the German occupiers. Kees was 27 years old at the time.

Isaac Cohensius (1910–1993) graduated as a doctor in Utrecht shortly before his deportation to Poland. He was forced to work as a camp doctor in the labour camps around Auschwitz. His wife also worked there as a nurse but was soon murdered. After the war, Isaac wrote down some of his memories of the camp, which were later published under the title Kampdokter (Camp Doctor). In the book, he recalls the poor hygiene, the poor food, and the corporal punishment prevalent in the camps. He emigrated to Israel after the war and died there at the age of 82.

Wim Eggink (1920–1945) studied Geography during the war, having been taught by Professor Louis van Vuuren, who became the university's rector in 1941. Eggink and van Vuuren had major differences of opinion regarding how to deal with the occupying forces, but the conflict was even more significant with Van Vuuren’s predecessor, Hugo Kruyt, who sought to keep the university running as usual after the Germans had excluded Jewish staff and students. 

Wim Eggink served as the president of the Vugs student association and, in 1941, founded the resistance group Utrechtsch Studentencontact, which later joined The Council of Nine, the national resistance network. Eggink published the illegal student magazine Sol Iustitiae and later contributed to the illegal publications Ons Volk and Het Parool. In the end, he was betrayed and arrested. He was granted permission to marry, but was subsequently sent to the Hamelin prison in Germany, where he died in 1945. A portrait of Eggink can be seen in the Vening Meinesz Building. The Van Lier and Eggink Hall, in the Administration Building, also honours him and the Van Lier cousins.

Other events to commemorate Remembrance 
At 4:30 pm, Associate Professor Bjorn Wansink is giving a lecture in the Aula of Utrecht University Hall, entitled "Everyone is Looking for a Safe Place: Talking to Young People and Children about Crisis and Conflict." After the lecture, the Executive Board and students from the University Council will lay wreaths on Dom Square.

At 8:00 pm, the official wreath-laying ceremony with Mayor Sharon Dijksma takes place on the square, followed by the annual 4 May lecture by Studium Generale in the Aula. This time, it will be delivered by Jurriën Hamer, a lecturer in Ethics and Political Philosophy, who will explore what we need to realise our freedoms. The lecture (in Dutch only) takes place from 8.30 pm to 9.30 pm. No registration is required.