On Friday 15 November at the British Library conference European Political Refugees to the UK from 1800, I spoke about a little-known group of ordinary people who travelled to the UK from occupied Netherlands, between 1940 and 1944, called ‘Engelandvaarders’, or ‘England Farers’. It sounds simple enough, but it was a very dangerous undertaking and many did not make it.
One of those whose attempt failed was Binnert Philip de Beaufort (1919-1945)
Binnert Philip de Beaufort (1919-1945), from the fourth edition of his book Kerstmis in Scheveningen (Hilversum, 2021) YF.2022.a.7493.
Binnert had been on a mission to take some important papers to England via the Southern Route, which led from the Netherlands through Belgium, France, Spain and Portugal. Almost a thousand England Farers took this route to England. He set off for England in 1942, but when he arrived in Brussels he was betrayed, arrested and taken back to the Netherlands where he was imprisoned in Scheveningen Prison. This prison held people persecuted by the Nazis: Jews, gay people, Jehovah’s Witnesses and members of the resistance. The last group gave the prison its nickname Het Oranjehotel (‘The Orange Hotel’). Oranje refers to the Dutch Royal Family, particularly Queen Wilhelmina, who had taken refuge in London, from where she was one of the leaders of the resistance.
The so-called ‘Oranjehotel’, the prison in Scheveningen. (Image from Wikimedia Commons)
It was from the Oranjehotel that 250 prisoners were taken to the dunes, executed and buried there. Binnert knew he was going to be among them. So did his friends outside the prison. They hatched a plan to get him out. Binnert was admitted to a hospital nearby, from where he managed to escape in May 1943. He went into hiding for fourteen months, and this is when he wrote his account of his time in prison, about Christmas 1942. In December 1944 it was published anonymously and clandestinely in Amsterdam by Th. E. Nije as Kerstmis in Scheveningen (‘Christmas in Scheveningen’).
Title page of Kerstmis in Scheveningen (Amsterdam, 1944) X.809.4019.
Nije was a small printers house and publisher, who was acquainted with a larger publishing house, owned by the family with whom Binnert had stayed.
In February 1945 Binnert was walking down the Kalverstraat in Amsterdam when he ran into some German police who shot him. Although he managed to climb onto the rooftops, he fell and died. He was buried in the dunes, amongst many other resistance fighters. This burial place was later made into the Cemetery of Honour in Bloemendaal.
Kerstmis in Scheveningen tells the story of how Binnert became aware of his strong Christian faith. Faced with enormous pressures of the endless interrogations, the hunger and cold and terrible conditions in prison he found strength in the words ‘As long as God is with me, who can be against me?’ Christmas 1942 was very challenging for him. On 23 December the Germans had taken away 500 inmates, including his two cellmates. He did not know where they had been taken. His block was almost empty, and he felt lonely. On Christmas Eve he was again taken for interrogation to the Binnenhof, or Inner Court in the centre of The Hague. His technique of getting through these long hours of questioning was to concentrate on something else, mainly his faith. On the way out of the building he had to pass tables groaning under all sorts of Christmas treats, whilst he had hardly eaten anything. That evening he was at a particularly low point, but his spirits were lifted by the arrival of a new cellmate and Christmas parcels from the Red Cross. After having eaten, Binnert felt inspired to read the Nativity story to his cellmate. However, other prisoners wanted to hear this too. Standing on a little stool so he could talk through an air vent, Binnert found himself preaching a Christmas sermon. Other prisoners told Christmas stories and the evening ended by all of them singing ‘Silent Night’. The carol reverberated throughout the prison. It was a true spiritual experience, and it gave him strength to sit out the next five months, before his escape.
Kerstmis in Scheveningen was printed in 3000 copies. Proceeds went to various resistance groups in support of their work. This was how the publishing of clandestine titles worked. Nearly 1100 individual book titles were printed clandestinely, ‘with much trouble and danger’, as stated on the title page of Kerstmis in Scheveningen. Both amateur and professional printers risked their freedom and indeed their lives in making these books. Some print runs were tiny, around 25 copies, some were large, counting thousands of copies. Their aim was the same: to give the readers hope, as well as to raise funds for the resistance. That is also why not many titles appeared in later editions after the war, but Kerstmis in Scheveningen did see a second edition. In 1945 the publishing house De Bezige Bij (‘The Busy Bee’) published a new edition with a tribute to Binnert. In 1960 a third edition appeared, published by Buskes in Amsterdam and in 2021 a new, fourth edition was published by Verloren, with a prologue and a biography of Binnert by Esther Blom.
Cover of the fourth edition of Kerstmis in Scheveningen
Kerstmis in Scheveningen captures the spirit of those who resisted the Nazi occupation like few other titles. It shines a light on the involvement of young people; some of whom paid with their lives. It is part of a very special collection of almost 600 clandestinely published books held by the British Library.
Marja Kingma, Curator Germanic Collections
Further reading:
Agnes Dessing, Tulpen voor Wilhelmina: de geschiedenis van de Engelandvaarders (Amsterdam, 2004) YF.2005.a.31442.
Dirk de Jong, Het vrije boek in onvrije tijd: bibliografie van illegale en clandestiene bellettrie. (Leiden, 1958) 11926.pp.34.
Anna Simoni, Publish and Be Free: a Vatalogue of Clandestine Books Printed in the Netherlands, 1940-1945, in the British Library (The Hague; London, 1975) 2725.aa.1