Dutch commemorate doctor shot by Nazis for helping injured soldiers
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《英国医生杂志》
Elderly residents of Arnhem gathered this week to honour the memory of a local doctor who, 60 years ago, was shot by the Nazis for helping injured British soldiers as fierce fighting raged in the Dutch city.
The handful of remaining witnesses met at a small plaque in Bakker Straat ("Baker Street"), now a city centre shopping precinct, to recall his work. The plaque reads: "In remembrance of J Zwolle, doctor, shot 19 September 1944."
They met as part of the larger and last official commemoration of the Battle of Arnhem, in which about 3500 British and Polish paratroopers were killed or wounded while trying to maintain a bridgehead north of the Rhine.
Testimony to the doctor’s courage is shown in a diary of a teacher of English, Wilhelmina Schouten, that remains in a local archive. She was a volunteer with the air protection service that was based at her school on the quayside north of the Rhine, half a mile from the Allies’ objective, the bridge.
She reported to the school for duty as Allied bombers pounded the city. She joined the 40 staff and local families who sheltered in its large cellars. Miss Schouten recalls how two severely wounded soldiers were carried in. One, Corporal Arthur Maybury, had been shot in the stomach; the other, 21 year old paratrooper John Watkinson, in the eye, neck, and left thigh. Staff decided to summon a respected local GP, Jan Zwolle, aged 50.
Dr Zwolle operated on both patients. Maybury later died, but Watkinson is thought to have survived.
Throughout the next day the fighting intensified, and it continued until early the next morning, when the Germans arrived, demanding to know where the wounded and dead English soldiers were. They ordered Watkinson to be carried to a waiting car and the building evacuated.
Miss Schouten returned home and later discovered that Dr Zwolle and four other men had been shot soon after by the Germans in a nearby building, allegedly for "terrorism" and "cooperating with the British." Dr Zwolle lies in Arnhem’s Moscowa cemetery.(Utrecht Tony Sheldon)
The handful of remaining witnesses met at a small plaque in Bakker Straat ("Baker Street"), now a city centre shopping precinct, to recall his work. The plaque reads: "In remembrance of J Zwolle, doctor, shot 19 September 1944."
They met as part of the larger and last official commemoration of the Battle of Arnhem, in which about 3500 British and Polish paratroopers were killed or wounded while trying to maintain a bridgehead north of the Rhine.
Testimony to the doctor’s courage is shown in a diary of a teacher of English, Wilhelmina Schouten, that remains in a local archive. She was a volunteer with the air protection service that was based at her school on the quayside north of the Rhine, half a mile from the Allies’ objective, the bridge.
She reported to the school for duty as Allied bombers pounded the city. She joined the 40 staff and local families who sheltered in its large cellars. Miss Schouten recalls how two severely wounded soldiers were carried in. One, Corporal Arthur Maybury, had been shot in the stomach; the other, 21 year old paratrooper John Watkinson, in the eye, neck, and left thigh. Staff decided to summon a respected local GP, Jan Zwolle, aged 50.
Dr Zwolle operated on both patients. Maybury later died, but Watkinson is thought to have survived.
Throughout the next day the fighting intensified, and it continued until early the next morning, when the Germans arrived, demanding to know where the wounded and dead English soldiers were. They ordered Watkinson to be carried to a waiting car and the building evacuated.
Miss Schouten returned home and later discovered that Dr Zwolle and four other men had been shot soon after by the Germans in a nearby building, allegedly for "terrorism" and "cooperating with the British." Dr Zwolle lies in Arnhem’s Moscowa cemetery.(Utrecht Tony Sheldon)