Joop Westerweel


Joop Westerweel was a schoolteacher and a Christian anarchist who became a Dutch World War II resistance leader, the head of the Westerweel Group.
Westerweel, along with Joachim Simon and other Jewish colleagues, helped save around 200 to 300 Jews by organizing an escape route, smuggling Jews through Belgium, France and on into neutral Switzerland and Spain. He was arrested on March 10, 1944, after leading a group of Jewish children to safety in Spain, whilst on his way back to the Netherlands at the Dutch/Belgian border. He was executed at Herzogenbusch concentration camp in August 1944.

Righteous Among the Nations

On June 16, 1964, Yad Vashem recognized Johan Gerard Westerweel and his wife, Wilhelmina Dora Westerweel-Bosdriesz, as Righteous Among the Nations.