Willy Kruyt

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Notable

Traits

Dutch reformed referend, social activist, left wing politician and journalist, who became executed as a Soviet spy during WW2. He was the son of the bookshop keeper, later publisher Johannes Hermanus Kruyt (26 Sept 1839, Arnhem - 21 Aug 1898, Bussum) and the Scottish Maria Ida Perkins (18 Aug 1846, Rothes -28 March 1940, Utrecht). They married 16 July 1872 in London and got between 1873 and 1882 five children. His youngest brother Hugo Rudolph became a prominent physical chemist and university chairman. The Dutch name "Kruit" refers to nurturing foods, but also to "buskruid" (gun or black powder). His father belonged to the Christian anti-revolutionary party (ARP) and became an editor of "De Heraut" and the publisher of "De Standaard" newspaper (1872) and other Dutch Reformed Church periodicals. After a boarding school in England, Kruyt started to work in the business of his father, and decided that he wanted to be a pastor or kind of prophet like ARP hero Abraham Kuyper. After finishing the necessary Dutch state examinations, he studied theology in Amsterdam (1907) and Zeist and was from March 1913 till 1 September 1918 a pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Catholic city of Gennep. Meanwhile he became an editor of the pacifistic Christian-Socialistic periodical "Opwaarts" in 1913, that really wanted justice for all and to "beat their swords into plowshares (Isaiah 2:2-4). In 1914 he became chairman of the "Bond van Christen-Socialisten" (BCS, League of Christian Socialists, erected in 1907). The BCS was both a radical Marxist and a Christian party. The BCS took the second commandment of Christ from the Gospel of Matthew, "Thou shall love thy neighbour like thyself" as its leading principle. Their program included the abolition of monarchy and the Senate, equal rights for men and women, free education, the implementation of better labour laws, a minimum wage and social security, disarmament, legalisation of conscientious objection against military service and independence of the Dutch Indies. From 17 September 1918 to 24 June 1922 he was the only member of the Dutch parliament for the radical left wing pacifist BCS, that got only 0.6% of the votes from primarily from lower-class Protestants (woman's right to vote or be elected were introduced in 1917, resp. 1918 in the Netherlands). After the death of his first wife (1922), he went to Berlin, on the invitation of Willi Münzenberg (14 August 1889, Erfurt – June 1940, Saint-Marcellin), to become an international journalist. He wrote for the Berliner "Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung" and the Parisian "Nos Regards". Around 1935, two years after the Nazi's occupied Germany in 1933, he and his third German wife and his son Niko fled to Moscow. He became a secretary of the Lenin library. Later he became professor of Scandinavian languages in Moscow. But he felt unhappy with the authoritarian implementation of the Stalinist Marxism. He wanted to return home, and decided to become a spy for the Allied Forces. He and his son Nicodemus "Niko" followed a spy training in Russia. From England he was dropped by a parachute in Belgium on 24 June 1942. He broke his leg and was arrested. He was tortured by the Nazi's, but kept his mouth. July 1943 he was deported to Berlin, where he was executed in the Moabit prison. Personal On 30 April 1901 he married Catharina Geertruida "Truus "Anna Maria Hogerzeil (21 Sep 1876 - 18 Oct 1922). She was the daughter of the influential reverent H.V. Hogerzeil (1839-1907) and introduced him into social affairs. They got two daughters and two sons, including his Benjamin Nicodemus "Nico" Kruyt (18 Dec 1916 - 18 July 1954). When Truus died they were 6, 15,17 and 19 years old. He was broken. On 18 September 1923 he married the 33 years old communist piano teacher Nelly Dentz (10 March 1890). They got sons in 1926 and 1927, but they divorced 4 June 1932. That same year he married the German communist Gustel Schmidt (?-1941), a social worker. They got no children. Link to Dutch Wikipedia