Oorzaak: Victim of WW II - suicide
Er ist verheiratet mit Bernardina Gijsbertha Maria Daamen.
Sie haben geheiratet am 19. Januar 1940 in Utrecht, UT Netherlands, er war 27 Jahre alt.Quelle 4
Cornelis was one of many victims after Germany invaded Netherlands on 10 May 1940. Hundreds of people committed suicide - just over half were Jewish - the same number made an attempt and failed. During the years 1936 to 1946 a total of 9073 people took their own lives for this reason. For this family it was Cornelis, his wife and his parents.
Truus van Lier - a daughter of Cornelis·Äô uncle - was famous for her actions during WWII - Truus escorted Jews to safehouses. She also worked as a courier, delivering messages and weapons, and she infiltrated the NSB and the Wehrmacht in Amersfoort. She soon assumed an active role in the armed resistance, with dramatic consequences. Truus became involved with the Amsterdam-based resistance group CS-6. The members of CS-6 engaged in espionage, sabotage and assassinations. Truus was prepared to go to extremes to resist the German occupation. She even hosted meetings of the CS-6 group in her family home at Prins Hendriklaan 48. Truus brought at least 150 Jewish children to safety, through a Utrecht day-care center that later became known as ·ÄúKindjeshaven·Äù.
On 3 September 1943, near Willemsplantsoen in Utrecht, Truus shot and killed police superintendent G J Kerlen. He was a member of the NSB and was about to order the arrest of a group of Jews and resistance fighters. Directly after the assault, Truus fled to Haarlem where she went into hiding. SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Willy Lages offered a 10,000 guilder reward to whoever could help identify the assassin, described as ·Äòan approximately 20-year-old female on a bicycle·Äô wearing a ·Äògrey-checkered cape·Äô. A few days later, Truus was betrayed by a woman who had previously been part of the CS-6 resistance group but had been forced by the Germans to work as a spy. Truus was arrested on 14 September 1943 and jailed in the prison at Amstelveenseweg in Amsterdam. She was executed on 27 Oct 1943, together with two other women, Reina Prinsen Geerligs and Nel Hissink. The three women walked before the firing squad with their heads held high and singing. In July 1946 Truus·Äôs father received formal confirmation that his daughter had been killed by firing squad in Concentration Camp Sachsenhausen.
Joods Monument : https://www.joodsmonument.nl (excerpt)
Cornelis van Lier studied Mathematics and Physics in Utrecht. He was a member of the Utrechtsch Studenten Corps and held various board positions. In the 1934/1935 academic year he was President of the Algemeene Debating Club, a sub-association within the Corps. In the same year he sat on the board (as Vicarus) of the Philosophical Faculty, an association of students of Mathematics and Physics. In the academic year 1935/1936 and in 1936/1937 he was tax officer of the Philosophical Faculty. He married B G M (Bernardina) Daamen on January 19, 1940. Both committed suicide in Haarlem on May 14, 1940, together with Cornelis' father.
Addition of a visitor of the website
Cornelis van Lier was a physicist. Before the war, he was an assistant to the Utrecht professor of theoretical physics.
Addition of a visitor of the website
Cornelis van Lier was sergeant 2-I-Dep. M.D. (Motordienst) in the Dutch army during the Dutch mobilisation.
Netherlands Institute of Military History, Database of Fallen Soldiers, compiled by Colonel J W de Leeuw
Kees van Lier succeeded Boris Kahn as George Uhlenbeck's assistant. As a student, Kees van Lier had published a paper with George Uhlenbeck in the field of nuclear physics (Physica 4, 531, 1937). During the academic year 1939-1940 Kees van Lier was absent and Abraham Pais became temporary assistant to Uhlenbeck.
Michel Hesseling
Mij Krijgen ze Niet Levend (de zelfmoorden van 1940) : Book by Lucas Lligtenberg (excerpt)
In May 1940, the Netherlands was overrun by a wave of suicides. Hundreds of men, women, couples, refugees, Jews, soldiers, professors, directors, doctors, shop assistants and office workers decided not to wait for a future under German rule and ended their lives. Entire families, sometimes tightly orchestrated, killed themselves.
Menno ter Braak had already announced his suicide to his wife in 1933, but when he put his words into action on the day of the capitulation, he was not the first and certainly not the only one. The doctor Eduard Wiener, his wife and their youngest son also committed suicide. There were nearly four hundred people who took their own lives in May 1940. The largest suicide wave in Dutch history is not unknown, but has always been underexposed in historical research. Who were these people? What moved them? Who did they leave behind?
Lucas Ligtenberg·Äôs book makes it painfully clear how great the chaos and panic were after the German invasion, how colossal the fear and devastation. Ligtenberg traced three quarters of the cases in the archives, read police reports and farewell letters and talked to relatives. His poignant book sheds light on a side of the war that few know: at the start, these people found a self-chosen end.
English name of this book - ·Äúthey won·Äôt get me alive·Äù
Interview with Lucas (excerpt)
On the evening of the 15th of May 1940, only five days after German forces had invaded the Netherlands, Jewish writer Abel Herzberg was walking through Amsterdam. It was his job to make sure all the lights in the city were turned off, to make it harder for Nazi bombers to find their target. That's exactly what he was doing when he was stopped by a panicking maid, who begged him to follow her to a home nearby. When they got there, Herzberg found the bodies of a Dutch couple who had attempted suicide. He tried to save them, but it was too late. The pair were not unique in their decision to end their own lives ·Äì that same month, 350 people in the Netherlands, including entire families, did the same thing.
Why do you feel these stories are so important?
They represent the panic and shock caused by the occupation. It's hard to fully appreciate what Dutch people ·Äì and especially Dutch Jewish people ·Äì must have felt when the Germans invaded. For many, the thought of Hitler in charge was so terrifying that they decided suicide was their only way out. In some cases, it only took five days for them to lose hope. Trying to understand their stories gives some more insight into how horrible this period was.
Why do you think most history books haven't paid that much attention to these suicides?
That same historian Loe de Jong, who was Jewish, fled with his wife and neighbours to the Dutch port city of IJmuiden on the day after the Dutch capitulation, to head to London from there. But they were split up and while De Jong and his wife made it to London, his neighbours ·Äì the Win family ·Äì had to return home. That same night, the Wins all took their lives. He was very close to them, they had often gone sailing together. Maybe the experience was too painful to write about. He only ever briefly mentioned the suicide once in his work.
Did doing this research ever become too much for you?
Yes, one of the stories that really shocked me was that of Bruno Asch. He was a prominent Jewish German ·Äì a member of the local council in Frankfurt and Berlin ·Äì living in the Netherlands with his family in 1940. When the German army invaded Amsterdam, he took his own life. I can only speculate it was out of guilt for not taking his family to safety. His wife and children were later arrested by the Germans and sent to a concentration camp. One of his daughters escaped initially ·Äì she was just on her way home with a friend. When she saw her sisters and mother at the tram stop she wanted to run to see them, but her friend stopped her. Her mother and sisters were killed in the concentration camp, and she herself was eventually arrested four months later and killed as well.