Dutch officers uniform jacket, infantry 2nd lieutenant (named)

This jacket is in good condition, although there is some slight moth damage. The number "200" is embroidered inside (possibly a laundry number?), and the wearer's name, "V D Waals," is written there as well.

A fair amount is known about Van der Waals (2nd Lieutenant Gerrit Hendrikus van der Waals). He was born in Surabaya and came to the Netherlands in 1937 for officer training at the KMA (Royal Military Academy). Following the capitulation, Van der Waals ended up in Stalag 371 in Stanislau, Ukraine, in 1942. In August 1943, he became the first Dutch officer to successfully escape from this camp.

In September, after a journey across the Carpathian Mountains, he reached Budapest.

Following the German occupation of Hungary in 1944, he joined the resistance, assisting—among other activities—with the forging of documents and helping escaped Allied soldiers and Jews. He worked with the Swedisch diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. After the liberation of the city I 1944, he was arrested by the NKVD on suspicion of espionage and died of tuberculosis in the Lubjanka-Lefortovo prisons in Moscow in 1948. In April 1948, he was posthumously awarded the Bronze Lion for his resistance work.