- Cato Bontjes van Beek
Cato Bontjes van Beek (
November 14 ,1920 –August 5 ,1943 ) was a German member of the resistance against the Nazi régime.Early years
Born in Fischerhude near Bremen, Cato was the eldest of three children. She spent her
childhood and youth in theWorpswede /Fischerhudeartists' colony near Bremen. Cato's parents,potter Jan Bontjes van Beek anddancer and painter Olga Bontjes van Beek (née Breling) offered their children no material wealth, but rather an abundance of artistic and mental stimulation, which had a decisive effect on the children. The family's political leanings were unequivocally anti-fascist . Cato did not join the "Bund Deutscher Mädel ". She and her sister Mietje lived with their father in Berlin from 1940, where he had moved in 1933 in the hopes of spreading his artistic work. They met friends at their father's house who opposed the Nazi régime. Cato also learned her father's craft, and caused her schoolteacher some problems by being a bit outspoken, and this at a time when the Nazis had just come to power. "Children," he had intoned, even though he was not a Party member, "one cannot swim against the current." Cato retorted, "But we "can!"And she did, as did Mietje.
Both sisters saw the wrong that the Nazis inflicted upon others, were affected by it, and tried to help. Beginning in 1941, this included giving
humanitarian aid to Frenchprisoners of war . Both Cato and Mietje would go to the "Lehrter Bahnhof", therailway terminal where the prisoners were often to be found, to hand outcigarette s andmatch es, exchange letters, and give the prisoners gifts ofsoap andglove s. The girls were well aware of the dangers of doing such things, but they wanted to bring a measure of humanity, however small, to National Socialism.Fact|date=February 2007Resistance activities
Cato Bontjes van Beek's active work against the Nazis began in the Red Orchestra resistance organization after she had gotten to know
Libertas Schulze-Boysen . After this group was broken up, she undertook further action together withHeinz Strelow . She printed and distributed illegal writings and leaflets which sought to arouse readers to the struggle and resistance against the Nazis' reign of terror. Van Beek's struggle ended with her arrest by theGestapo on 20 September 1942 in her father's pottery shop in Berlin. On 18 January 1943, she was found guilty at the "Reichskriegsgericht" ("Reich Military Tribunal") of "abetting a conspiracy to commithigh treason " and sentenced to death. She wasguillotine d on 5 August 1943 atPlötzensee Prison inBerlin .A "Gymnasium" in Achim, a town near Bremen, has since 1991 borne the name Cato Bontjes van Beek-Gymnasium. A street in nearby Fischerhude also bears her name, and an explanatory notice. Both these places are in the Verden district.
Cato's younger sister Mietje Bontjes van Beek managed to escape Nazi persecution, despite her activities, and at the time of writing was still alive and living in Fischerhude.
Literature
Hermann Vinke: Cato Bontjes van Beek. 'Ich habe nicht um mein Leben gebettelt'. Ein Porträt ("I Did Not Beg for my Life"; A Portrait). Zürich, Hamburg 2003: Arche. ISBN 3-7160-2313-2
Heidelore Kluge: Cato Bontjes van beek. 'Ich will nur eins sein und das ist ein Mensch'. (I only want to be one thing - and that's a Human.) Stuttgart 1995: Urachhaus. ISBN 3-8251-7003-9
External links
*
* [http://www.washausen.de/fischerhude/deutsch/fku62cc.htm Brief biography (Ger.) and another picture]
* [http://www.washausen.de/fischerhude/deutsch/shc48.htm Site about the artist's colony where Cato Bontjes van Beek was from]Sources
* Linked German article
* [http://www.wom.de/books/detail/-/isbn/3716023132 additional information]
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