Willem Arondeus Poster
When the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, the artists went underground and set their skills to fighting back. For years, printmakers and designers like the openly gay Willem Arondeus worked forging documents to keep Jews and other people safe from the fascists. As the occupation dragged on, Willem and his friends decided to step things up and torch the city records office where the Nazis keep information about everyone in the city. A fashion designer in their midst sewed them counterfeit Nazi uniforms to get them in the door, then medical students applied sedatives to the guards to knock them out. The fire burned nearly a million identity records. The arsonists were caught, and Willem, his lover, and ten other of his friends were executed on July 1st, 1943. His last words, smuggled out to the world by his lesbian lawyer, were “let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards.”
