In a Dutch graveyard on-line, I discovered a reference to a name of infamy in
WW2 history. The woman dubbed "the Black Widow" has her gravestone
inscribed with the words "Waarheid maakt vrij". Dutch is closely related
to the German language, and the German
version of the above line is "Wahrheit macht frei", not far off that
chilling line at Auschwitz: "Arbeit macht frei". What does it all mean?
The line on the gravestone means "Truth liberates" and the Auschwitz
line means "Labour liberates". However, the Black Widow, who died 9
years ago, was the wife of collaborator Rost van Tonningen, who headed
up the Dutch Central Bank during WW2, assisting the occupying Nazi
forces whichever way he could. After liberation, he was incarcerated in
Scheveningen jail at The Hague, and jumped (his widow always maintained
that he was pushed) over the parapet of a balcony, from which he fell to
his death some 17 feet below. The truth that she refers to is slightly
different from the commonly held view. Common parlance is not to speak
ill of the dead. On the subject of the Black Widow, I shall therefore be
silent henceforth.
