Wartime student and resistance hero Truus is remembered in a daffodil monument

Utrecht law student Truus van Lier (22.4.1921-27.10.1943) joined the resistance at an early age and did not survive the war. But her name is being kept alive in a special way. Poet and lawyer Hanneke van Eijken, who also studied law in Utrecht, spoke to Frank de Munnik, guardian of a unique monument.

By Hanneke van Eijken

It is a sunny spring day and the shadows are making giraffe patterns on the pavement. I am cycling across the bridge towards the Catharijnesingel, thinking about Truus van Lier, a law student who also used to cycle here long ago. Watching the white clouds drifting in the clear blue sky and a dog chasing a stick in the distance, it's hard to imagine that very close to this place, on September 3, 1943, Truus shot a police superintendent. She was 22 years old. Truus had had a special pocket sewn into the inside of her checkered coat to hide her gun in. Her courage to fight for her values at such a young age fascinates me. I also studied law in this city, but in very different times.

I meet Frank de Munnik on a bench alongside the canal, close to an old church, called the Geertekerk. Right in front of us, on the other side of the water, is the monument that he takes care of together with other volunteers. It will probably become more noticeable in a week or two, but if you look closely you can clearly see the name TRUUS in the grass, written in yellow daffodils. The monument has been here for 16 years now, visible for a few weeks every spring.  

Frank teaches music at the Utrecht conservatory, which has a connection to the van Lier family history. He explains: “Bertus van Lier, Truus’s cousin, taught at the conservatory before the war. He gave his notice on May 10, 1940 and joined the resistance.” Each year Frank tells his students about the cousins’ acts of resistance. Bertus’s younger sister, Trui, also was a hero. During the war she brought at least 150 Jewish children to safety, through a Utrecht day-care center that later became known as “Kindjeshaven” (Children’s refuge).

“The van Lier family were already hiding Jews in their house before the war. They realized what was happening early on and took action”, Frank explains. “Truus must have been a very determined young woman. She smuggled weapons, brought people to safehouses and secretly took pictures of the airbase in Soesterberg. She was doing what some people would call ‘men’s work’. She took enormous risks”.

Truus’s last great act of resistance was the liquidation of Gerardus Johannes Kerlen, NSB party member and superintendent of the Utrecht police. He was in charge of the squads that tracked down Jews. Eleven days after the shooting Truus was arrested in a café in Haarlem; she had been betrayed. After a short stay in prison in Utrecht and later in Amsterdam, Truus was transported to concentration camp Sachsenhausen, where shortly after her arrival she was executed. Eyewitnesses recall that she walked towards the firing squad singing, in the company of two other resistance fighters. Frank: “For a long time her father didn’t know what had happened to his daughter. In the archives you can find an advertisement he put in the papers after the war, looking for her”.

So here we are, a lawyer and a music teacher, almost 77 years later, on a bench in the sun, close to the place where Truus carried out her last act of resistance. It is hard to imagine how much courage that act required. People pause for a little chat with us. We point out the flowers to them, and tell them about Truus. It is an underground monument, with strong roots, visible to those who are really looking. A perfect monument for a resistance fighter.

Poem for Truus

You are nineteen and all around violence explodes
like glass from its frames and you choose
the law as your weapon
above your last exam you wrote in block letters
about justice and how 
it falters at times

I follow your steps across the bridge today
clouds in white crests travel across the sky
gravel grating under jogging girls’ shoes

you sewed a pocket inside your coat
a cotton chamber for your gun

how far is a hundred yards from bridge to target?
how long will two shots still ring inside your head?
how do you walk singing towards a firing squad?

on the canal’s bank your name is written in daffodils
the roots hold on to each other underground
like justice grows in a network of language

I stand inside a day transparent as glass, I read your
steps like a compass, your singing still ringing 
 

Poem: Hanneke van Eijken
Translated by: Heijnderik Burke

VersVrijheid - Freedom newspaper

This article artikel and poem are published in VersVrijheid, a free, special newspaper with poetry, interviews, stories and war time photo's, all for the celebration 75 Years of Freedom in Utrecht. It was printed in 15.000 copies, spread all thourgh the city of Utrecht and also digitally available. VersVrijheid is an initiative of the Utrechts Stadsdichtersgilde (the guild of city poets).
Eyewitnesses, who are still alive, are interviewed in the newspaper and there's poetry in the newspaper of Utrecht poets from within and outside the Utrecht City Poets Guild, but also from international poets who could not or could not write freely. Historian Ad van Liempt wrote a contribution, Mayor Jan van Zanen too.

The article and the poem on Truus van Lier are written by Hanneke van Eijken, poet, lawyer and lecturer and researcher in the field of Law at Utrecht University. Hanneke is a member of the Utrechts Stadsdichtersgilde.
Want to read more about Truus? Visit Truusvanlier.nl  Het cousins Trui and Bertus van Lier are also documented there. Frank de Munnik is owner of the site. On May 4, letters to Truus, written by his students will be published on the website.