Marinus was the oldest son of Gerrit Derk Dikken and Hendrika Christina Zwiersen. He was their
second child, born soon after a girl called Petronella ('Nellie'), who had died within a year
after birth.
Marinus Dikken was born on the 25th of February of 1919 in Rotterdam-Kralingen. At the outbreak of
the war in Holland in 1940, he served in the armed forces, corps engineers. After the surrender
of the Dutch to Nazi-Germany he returned home to Rotterdam, to find the city in ruins. His
parents, sister and two brothers had lived through the bombardment of the city in the few days
that the Dutch were able to resist the German attacks militarily. In the spring of 1942 the
family moved to Utrecht. There Marinus joined the armed resistance (as a member of the
paramilitary group that called itself the 'Landelijke Knokploegen'). Betrayed and arrested, he
was taken to camp Amersfoort, than to Vught, to Gilze-Rijen, to Mittelbau-Dora, and to Buchenwald
(camp Ellrich). According to the testimony of a friend who had made it back to Holland in 1945,
Marinus Dikken died on the 27th of March 1945 in Buchenwald, two weeks before the camp was
liberated (on April 11th) by the American forces. He was one of the 13,056 prisoners that died in
Buchenwald during the first three months of 1945 alone.
In the picture, Marinus (in army uniform) is standing next to his girl-friend, Tjiske, who wears
his cap.
Les données affichées n'ont aucune source.