Jacoba van Tongeren is the only woman to have created and led a resistance group during the war.

As a child, she would live together with her father in a moveable home for army officers in the tropical rainforest, close to the bridge under construction.

Part of that involved inculcating military norms and values, such as great discipline and sense of responsibility.

In 1916, the van Tongeren family returned to The Netherlands and from 1916 to 1922 Jacoba went to the Dutch Reformed Gymnasium in Amsterdam.

At the beginning of the Second World War, she could still travel around the Netherlands as a social worker, in spite of the restrictions placed on ordinary citizens by the Nazi occupiers.

Hermannus van Tongeren called on Jacoba to take the membership lists and other important masonic documents to safe locations.

The young producers of VN were attempting to make contact with the Freemason's Grand Master via his daughter, Jacoba.

The plan was to set up an espionage group, which would inform the Dutch people by countering German propaganda.

Initially, Hermannus was reluctant to join but he then changed his mind and gave a typewriter and a mimeograph for the production of VN's first edition.

After the first edition had been published (on 31 August 1940), he increased his support, offering not only money but also contacts within the masonic network.

The first demand of the Special Family Care board was that this work was not to be endangered, in other words: no one was to antagonize the occupier.

Special fighting squads would attack the distribution offices, in order to steal those food coupons.

After the war, about ten members and workers from that group received the Yad Vashem medal, including Jacoba van Tongeren.

She proposed a merger of equals between her group and Vrij Nederland, which van Randwijk found unacceptable.

The rest of Groep 2000 remained independent and continued to concentrate its efforts on helping people in hiding.

But she needed to mind her health; at the end of the war she was weak and ill. She took a year's rest and then continued her occupation as a social worker.

She then set about writing her memoirs, sending them to a famous public radio pastor, Mr Klamer.

Only in 2015, when the book ‘Jacoba van Tongeren and the unknown resistance heroes of Groep 2000', was published, the veil was lifted.

It was based on the memoirs, which were discovered by accident by a son of Jacoba van Tongeren's brother.

In a 21 March 2015 lecture, Marjan Schwegman, director of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences explained the importance of the work done by van Tongeren and Groep 2000.