Memorial Victims April-May Strike Hardinxveld-Giessendam

This memorial, unveiled on 8 November 2025, commemorates the four employees of De Merwede Shipyard who were shot by the Germans on 3 May 1943 for their participation in the April/May strike.

De Merwede Shipyard also went on strike that day against forced labour. The German occupiers responded with harsh measures. At half past one in the afternoon, a number of Germans appeared at the shipyard and arrested forty-five employees. Twenty-four were immediately released because of their young age, but the remaining twenty-one were taken to the Heemraadssingel in Rotterdam, where the Sicherheitsdienst and the Standgericht were located. In a summary trial held immediately, seventeen of them were sentenced to ten years in prison and taken to Camp Vught.

The remaining four employees, Jan Willem de Blaey, Cornelis van Giessen, Cornelis Willem de Kok and Dirk Loeve, were sentenced to death in the same trial. They were given a short time to write a farewell letter, after which they were executed by firing squad on the same day, 3 May (most likely in Scheveningen).

The bodies were not returned to their relatives by the German occupiers and have still not been found to this day.

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Source

• Text: TracesOfWar
• Photos: Jan de Jager
• - https://www.hetkompashardinxveld-giessendam.nl/lokaal/herdenkingen/1214338/herdenkingsbord-en-bomen-voor-slachtoffers-van-april-mei-stak