The last remaining member of the World War II Engelandvaarders resistance group (England voyagers) died aged 101 at her home in Schilde in Belgium earlier this month.
Ellis Brandon was one of the few female members of the resistance who managed to escape to England to continue the fight against the Nazis from there.
She was 17 when war broke out and she immediately became involved in illegal activities, helping Jewish families, relaying messages, and distributing banned papers Vrij Nederland and Het Parool. She also stole ration books for clothes, food and petrol.
“Women seemed to be less important in those days but I never for a moment felt inferior to the men in the resistance. There were things I could do precisely because I was a woman, Brandon told the NRC in an interview some ten years ago.
Brandon, then 19, had barely time to escape when the Gestapo came looking for her in 1942 and made her way across after a perilous journey via Belgium, France and Portugal with her then boyfriend and fellow resistance fighter Herman Friedhoff.
Once in England, Brandon was disappointed she would not be sent out to the Netherlands as a spy. She was assigned a desk job, which she soon swapped for the job of detecting enemy planes on the roof of the ministerial building where she worked.
Brandon had a short fling with “Soldaat van Oranje” Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, whose life became the subject of a celebrated film and musical, and later married fellow Engelandvaarder Chris Krediet. She married a further two times and moved to Belgium where she lived independently until her death.
In 1980 she was awarded the resistance medal Verzetsherdenkingskruis for her work.
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