Group 2000

The founder of Group 2000, Jacoba van Tongeren, was an ecclesiastical social worker of the Dutch Reformed Church.

Born in 1903, she was educated since her childhood in discipline and secrecy by her father Hermannus van Tongeren, a high officer in the Dutch colonial army (KNIL).

At the same time she was approached by the co-founders of the illegal magazine Vrij Nederland, Jan van der Neut and Frans Hofker.

They started setting up the resistance newspaper, supported materially and financially by Hermannus van Tongeren, who also helped with the contacts of the Freemasons.

At the request of the Reformed Church, Jacoba van Tongeren became social worker in charge of maintaining contact with the resistance.

Others still brought food packages to the Jews in the prisoner camps of Vught, Westerbork, Bergen-Belsen, or to persons in hiding.

Among them is Truus Wijsmuller, who personally arranged to help 600 Jewish children escape Austria in 1938, and 500 of them continuing their journey to England.

The district-work took care of the delicate and efficient communication and coupon distribution from centralised places to local neighbourhoods.

Group 2000 also secured a place for the Marine Transmission Station, an important strategic asset to receive messages from England and distribute the news all over the Netherlands.

More than ten members and employees had made great efforts to aid Jewish people in hiding and later received the Yad Vashem medal.

The extense of the network and the individual identities of members were beyond the grasp of all those who were involved, except Jacoba van Tongeren and one assistant, the only ones who assigned and knew code names.

The deeds of heroic, tough men was extensively documented, but much less so the work of female resistance fighters, who were messengers or did various other tasks like those of Group 2000.

In 1945, she only delivered a rather formal, factual report to the Dutch queen's consort, also General and supreme commander of the army, Prince Bernard of Lippe-Biesterfeld.

What made things worse, is that van Tongeren became chronically ill and was tied to her bed during many of the remaining years of her life.

Shortly before she died, in 1967, she wrote an extensive, deeply personal account of her ‘Memories’ to a pastor of a national radio station.

The publication lifted the veil of obscurity for the descendants of many Group members, who often knew only bits and pieces of the full story of their (great)grandfathers and – mothers, and for others who had an as yet incomplete picture of resistance in Amsterdam and many other parts of The Netherlands from 1940 to 1945.