Jan Dijkstra

Personal

Vocation

Dutch garage holder, victim of operation Silbertanne and Nazi Standrecht in the Netherlands. Dijkstra lived at the Parallelweg 24 of Meppel. His parents were Beerend Dijkstra and Imkje Dijkstra. He married Sijke Kramer (17 March 1895, Aalsum - 1 Augustus 1943, Meppel). The couple got 5 children. During WW2 the Dutch Reformed Dijkstra became a member of the Dutch resistance. He facilitated the armed resistance of the "KP Meppel" with cars and oil. The Sichterheitsdienst (SD, secret service) knew that his hiding son a was a "knokploeg" (fighting gang) member, but could not prove anything. On 25 September 1943, the KP Meppel liquidated the NSB farmer Hendrik Oosterveen (1 Febr. 1891, Veeningen - 25 September 1943, De Wijk). The German Sichterheitsdienst reacted with a series of reprisal murders with the code name Aktion Silbertanne. Suspects of opposition to the Nazi regime were approached by as police officers disguised SD members and "auf der Flucht erschossen" killed. But actually this was Standrecht, so well depicted by Goya in his "El Tres de Mayo": "A summary execution is an execution in which a person is accused of a crime and immediately killed without benefit of a full and fair trial" (Wikipedia). Standrecht by the SD was approved in the Netherlands by Adolf Hitler in 1943, but much earlier in Poland (1939) and other countries, that were not seen as Aryan. This state terror resulted in political conflict between the SD and the Dutch National Socialist NSB party. The first victims were three civilians of Meppel and Staphorst, who were known for their anti-Nazi opinions: Jan Dijkstra, Arend Boldewijn and Engbertus Johannes Roelfsema. The murders took place between 28 September 1943 at 23h30 and 01h00 the next day according to the NSB newspaper Het Volk. Their merciless executers Rudolph Grimm and Ernst Makowski were hardened in killing at the Eastern front. After the war Ernst Makowski was sentenced to eight years prison in Den Haag. The name Sibertanne was chosen by the SD as the death list of men to be killed were ordered on the paper as the leaves of a fir.