![]() Jean was one of the most sought after underground leaders of France, for whom the Gestapo at one time offered a reward of five million francs for his arrest. The escape route has greatly contributed to the French Resistance, and is responsible for the rescue of more than 1,080 people, including 800 Dutch Jews and more than 112 downed Allied pilots. 40 people were slain or died from the effects of captivity, including his sister who helped to coordinate escapes from Paris. In its heyday, 300 people were part of this underground network, of which about 150 people were arrested. In the Netherlands this message line was also known as "The Swiss Way". This escape route was also used for smuggling documents. In order to get passes to go in and out of the Swiss frontier zone, he set up a second textile shop in Annecy at the end of 1942.ĭutch-Paris became one of the largest and most successful underground networks for people persecuted for faith or race, Allied pilots, and persons of great Dutch importance to help them escape via Switzerland and Spain. In 1941, Jean founded " Dutch-Paris", an underground network of which the location of his Lyonnaise textile business soon became its headquarters. Because he had to abandon his Parisian business, he began a new business in Lyon. With the subsequent German occupation of France he fled with several others from Paris to Lyon in the unoccupied part of France. To his father's regret, he decided to go into business, and in 1935 he established a textile import/export business in Paris, France.Īround this time he went to Geneva to attend sessions of the League of Nations, and saw firsthand how ineffective that body was in preventing the outbreak of war in 1939.Īt the outbreak of World War II Jean was living in Paris. who studied at the University of Geneva, and had been a minister for the Seventh-day Adventists in Brussels and Switzerland, hoped Jean would follow in his footsteps. He was the eldest of four children, and grew up in Switzerland, near the French border at Collonges-sous-Salève - a village in the French department of Haute-Savoie, where his father taught Latin and Greek at the Seventh-day Adventist Church seminary.įollowing his education at French public schools, he attended basic courses at the Seventh-day Adventist Seminary in Collonges-sous-Salève. Although his birth name was Johan Hendrik, he used to call himself "Jean" and later in the U.S., "John". Smith made pancakes and spoke about God.Johan Hendrik Weidner (October 22, 1912, Brussels, Belgium - May 21, 1994, Monterey Park, California, United States) was a highly decorated Dutch hero of World War II. She did not use it, she said, because she feared a shootout if the police surrounded them. He left behind his guns but let her take her cellphone. She agreed to follow him in her car, believing that if she refused he would kill her or flee. Just before dawn, he asked her to go with him to move the truck he had taken from Mr. She read to him from "The Purpose-Driven Life," by Rick Warren, a California pastor who writes that each person's life has a God-given purpose. When they spoke of the slain customs agent, David Wilhelm, she said, "I tried to explain to him that he killed a 40-year-old man that was probably a father, a husband and a friend." He told her about the people he had wounded and killed.īy her account, Ms. "I told him that if he hurt me, my little girl wouldn't have a mommy or a daddy," Ms. Smith said that she believed that he came to trust her and that he eventually untied her. He told her, "I'm not going to hurt you if you just do what I say," Ms. Smith's apartment in Duluth, north of here, as she returned from the store. Nichols, a defendant on trial for rape who the police say attacked a sheriff's deputy, took her gun and fatally shot the judge in his case, the court reporter, a sheriff's deputy and, hours later, an off-duty customs agent. Smith held a news conference to describe the hours she spent as his captive and, gradually, as his confidante. Smith, 26, asked reporters and photographers to leave on Tuesday and rested with her mother and daughter at her aunt's home in a gated community in Martinez, near Augusta. At that point, most of us would have been screaming his name."Īfter a flood of television appearances, book offers and praise, Ms. A spokeswoman for the Christian Broadcasting Network in Virginia Beach, Angell Watts, said: "How many people do you hear of in these kind of situations who begin talking about the Lord and, literally, people are touched? She had the presence of mind to talk calmly.
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