The stays of a man determined after World War II in a mass grave out of doors one of the Netherlands’ most infamous Nazi prisons had been recognized through a DNA fit with a living relative, investigators said on Saturday.
Dutch military and civil examiners named the person Cornelis Pieter “Kees” Kreukniet, aged around 50 after research positioned his superb nephew in the usage of DNA.
“The victim could finally be identified as Kees Kreukniet, who was shot by a firing squad outside the Scheveningen prison” in late 1944, said Ronald Klomp, chairman of a Hague-based foundation dedicated to tracing missing war victims.
The search to identify Kreukniets’s remains makes for a great detective story: through scraps of clothing on the remains, Klomp’s foundation found the name of a clothes shop close to where Kreukniet lived until his arrest in The Hague in October 1944.
They also traced his name in a so-called death book of people who died at the Scheveningen prison, known as the “Orange Hotel” because of the thousands of pro-Dutch resistance members locked up there.
“The book gave his cause of death as pneumonia, but our investigation showed he was executed by firing squad and dumped into a mass grave,” Klomp told AFP.
Through his clothing and dental records, a Dutch army unit dedicated to the tracing and reinterment of WWII remains, found a relative and did a DNA test — which matched.
Kreukniet’s story could then be told: he was involved in printing a Hague-based resistance leaflet called “Ons Ochtendblad”, distributed by Hague municipal workers at the time.
Nazi forces occupied the Netherlands between 1940-45, prompting the Dutch royal family to flee to Britain in exile shortly after the Germans invaded on May 10, 1940.
Kreukniet was arrested when a consignment of paper was accidentally delivered to the wrong address and the Nazi secret service was tipped off, the national NOS news broadcaster reported.
Like many others, he disappeared without a hint after his arrest.
His and the stays of 8 other sufferers were first determined in 1947 and buried as “Unknown Dutch”.
In 2012, he became reburied — his identity nevertheless unknown — until research with the aid of the Dutch navy unit looking into identifying the stays was contacted through Klomp’s basis and together the puzzle turned into solved.
“I’m glad to finally know what happened to my great-uncle,” relative Joop Kreukniet, who donated the DNA, told the NOS.
“It’s not a positive story. But it does bring a certain relief to know what happened there,” Kreukniet said.