Gerrit van der Veen

Who was Gerrit van der Veen?

Gerrit van der Veen was a Dutch sculptor. He was a member of the Dutch underground, which resisted the German occupation of Amsterdam during World War II. The historian Robert-Jan van Pelt wrote:

In 1940, after the German occupation, van der Veen was one of the few who re-fused to sign the so-called “Arierverklaring,” the Declaration of Aryan Ancestry. In the years that followed, he tried to help Jews both in practical and symbolic ways. Together with the musician Jan van Gilse and the artist, art historian, and critic Willem Arondeus, van der Veen established the underground organization De Vrije Kunstenaar. Van der Veen and the other artists published a newsletter calling for resistance against the occupation. When the Germans introduced identity documents that distinguished between Jews and non-Jews, van der Veen, Arondeus and the printer Frans Duwaer produced some 80,000 false identity papers.

On 9 March 2002 van der Veen was made Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.