Johan Herman Laatsman de Bailleul (September 14, 1903 – May 28, 1976) was a Dutch diplomat with a distinguished record for Resistance during World War II.
The citation for the Medal of Freedom mentions that he embarked on a “self-imposed mission with outstanding success” and enabled the escape of at least 112 Allied aviators.
In 1941 he belonged to a short-lived French escape line led by Olivier Giran that evacuated Jews and young men to Switzerland.
[3] In addition, he had an intelligence connection inside the German Embassy in the person of Karl-Heinz Gerstner who provided confidential information and true-false papers through a Dutch student at the Sorbonne, Suzanne Hiltermann.
He and his colleagues – including Suzanne Hiltermann, Jean Michel Caubo, Brother Rufus Tourné, Fernande Goetschel, Lucie Comiti and Leo Mincowski – specialized in helping downed Allied aviators as they came through Paris on their way south to Spain and then to England.
[6] They worked with a French resistance group led by Miguel Duchanel to find aviators hiding in the Paris area and to get false documents and other necessities for their journey.
It took 5 days in overcrowded and overheated cattle cars full of political prisoners and 168 Allied airmen to arrive at Buchenwald concentration camp.
On October 28, 1944, Laatsman was transferred to Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, where he organized other prisoners to sabotage the V-1 and V-2 rockets they were building as slave labor.
Distraught over the disappearance of his son and suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, Laatsman made baseless accusations against some of his former resistance colleagues.