Norbert-Jan Nuij
Thea and Els were studying in Leiden when war descended upon the Netherlands on May 10, 1940. Law student Thea (24 years old) was jolted awake early that morning by gunfire and saw a burning plane through her attic window against a clear blue sky. While their brother Jan assisted at the Red Cross Hospital in The Hague – where their father was a surgeon – Thea and her younger sister refused to remain on the sidelines. Els, a field hockey international and biology student (21 years old), joined Leiden’s air raid protection services, while Thea drove her car around the city as a courier. Immediately after the bombing of Rotterdam, the sisters traveled to the devastated city to deliver medical supplies.
After graduating, Thea moved to Keizersgracht 524 in Amsterdam, where she lived alongside Jaap Nunez Vas, one of the founders of the resistance newspaper Het Parool with Lex Althoff. Through this connection, Thea became involved with the Parool group. She befriended Lex’s brother Eduard and his wife Germaine, who were sheltering Jewish refugees. Meanwhile, Els met Lex Althoff through a mutual friend. He recruited her as a courier to distribute Het Parool from Amsterdam. Later, in 1943, Els also became involved in the distribution of Ons Volk, another major underground resistance newspaper.
In early 1944, disaster struck when Thea was caught in a wave of arrests targeting Parool members. Her activities were exposed through her university friend Jet Roosenburg’s resistance efforts. During three tense weeks of imprisonment, Thea managed to establish secret contact with other Parool detainees, such as Jopie Waldorp. Unexpectedly, she was released from the Oranjehotel detention center in Scheveningen.
Tous
In September 1944, Thea met her future husband, Ed, while he was in hiding with the Althoffs. Edgard Tossanus (Toussaint) van Hove (1898–1972) was an Amsterdam-based artist in the advertising industry with Belgian roots. He had a son, Bob, from a previous marriage. Known to his friends as ‘Tous’, he was a free spirit and an early resistance member associated with the Comité Vrij Nederland (Free Netherlands Committee), founded in 1940 by his friend Tom Bosschart. After the group was dismantled in 1941, Bosschart was executed, while Tous narrowly escaped with a three-year sentence in a German labor camp. Upon his release in the summer of 1944, knowing the Gestapo would prefer his death, Tous immediately went into hiding.
During the harsh winter of 1944–1945, Thea and Ed found housing through resistance member Hantje Oostinga on Hunzestraat. They shared the space with Otmar Hammerstein (1917–2003), a German deserter who was part of the circle around the Weiße Rose resistance group but not an official member. Using the alias Otto Hoekstra, Otmar worked with Ed in a sabotage group. Thea assisted by transporting weapons.
After the chaos of Dolle Dinsdag (Mad Tuesday), Els also moved to Amsterdam. She continued her work with Ons Volk and began tasks for De Geus, the resistance newspaper run by Jan and Huib Drion. On one occasion, the sisters carried a shopping bag full of weapons when a German soldier approached them. Further away, Ed stood ready with a pistol under his coat, prepared to act, but the soldier merely asked for directions.
During that brutal winter, Ed and Thea narrowly avoided arrest – or worse – following a failed raid on the Klene candy factory on January 5, 1945. Several resistance members were captured and executed, including their friend Edgar Kan. On March 12, Thea was forced to witness the infamous retaliatory execution of thirty men in Weteringplantsoen, close to the Althoffs’ residence.
Three Castles
As liberation approached, Tous and his group, along with Thea, were assigned to one of the Persoonsbewijzen Centrale (PBC, Central Office for Identity Cards) units of the Three Castles battalion, a special branch of the Interior Forces (Binnenlandse Strijdkrachten, BS). Over the weekend of May 5–6, 1945, various units gathered at the Van Gelder paper factory on Singel. There, Thea reunited with Els, who was serving with Group 1 of the RVV (Council of Resistance).
On May 7, as crowds on Dam Square witnessed the arrival and departure of the first Allied reconnaissance unit around noon, Operation Three Castles was initiated. Resistance members, including Thea, Els, and Ed, helped secure key locations behind the Royal Palace, such as the Main Post Office, the money exchange office on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, and the Telephone Exchange.
However, during the disarming of German soldiers, chaos erupted. Gunfire broke out, and shortly after, the Kriegsmarine stationed in the Grote Club opened fire on the Dam square.
(NIOD 249-0500A, Dossier Nederlandsche Binnenlandsche Strijdkrachten)
Ed, who had fought in World War I, was one of only two members of the group with prior combat experience, the other being Otmar. The group also included a former policeman known as ‘Piet’, as well as Jonas ‘Johnny’ Kan, the brother of the executed Edgar Kan. In addition to the Kan brothers, Jesaja ‘Jacques’ de Vries was also Jewish, while Fred ‘Freddy’ Brommet, who would later become a renowned fashion photographer, was half-Jewish. Even Ed’s only son, Bob, participated in this extraordinary day, which happened to be his 19th birthday. Thea particularly recalled the moment a German military truck (‘lorry’) full of soldiers approached, and Ed shot the driver dead. This seems to align with a photograph of a truck stopped at the barricade at the rear of the money exchange office (Geldkantoor), with a dead German lying beside it. According to PBC resistance member Friso Kramer, the truck had come speeding over bridge no. 8 on the Singel from the direction of the Raadhuisstraat, only to be heavily fired upon by the Interior Forces. Kramer aimed at the tires but had to be cautious to avoid being hit in the crossfire. [1]
When Tous tried to retrieve the weapons left behind by the Germans from the truck, a bullet struck him in the thigh. While lying on the ground, he was nearly hit by a hand grenade thrown by his own group’s ‘Piet the Policeman’, who mistook him in his gray overalls for a German. However, when Piet heard the agreed-upon whistle signal for “man in danger” (three blasts), he recognized Ed and provided first aid. It was a puzzling stroke of luck, as Ed later claimed he hadn’t used the whistle at all.
Amid the chaos, Thea lost contact with her group for a while but later, upon returning to Van Gelder, learned that Tous had been shot and injured. Since she still had responsibilities with her group, she sent Els to search for him. Two hours later, Els returned with the news that he was in the Binnengasthuis hospital. Like other wounded fighters, he had been transported there on a handcart, accompanied by a scout carrying a white flag.
Jacques de Vries is also there, suffering from a gunshot wound to his shoulder. Els’s group was fortunate to emerge unscathed from the intense firefight. In a 2017 letter, she wrote how Bertus, “the bicycle repairman in my BS group”, proudly reported afterward that “he had fired so many shots in a row that the heat had caused… ‘dents to form in the barrel of his weapon’…” [2]
Ed required several weeks to recover and was still in the hospital when he married Thea in June. In 1947, their son Tom was born, and a year later, the family emigrated to Cape Town. Otmar Hammerstein remained in the Netherlands, and in 2014, his brother Notker published a book about him. Els married Engelandvaarder Winnie Arendsen de Wolff (1919–1987) in 1945, and they had two children.
Photo: J.W. Hofman, Amsterdam City Archives
Loss of many friends
Like many other resistance fighters, the sisters largely kept their wartime experiences within their close circle, spanning a wide network: Vrij Nederland, Het Parool, Ons Volk, De Geus, the Persoonsbewijzencentrale and various independent groups. This vast network also meant the loss of many resistance friends, including Han Gelder and Johan Brouwer. [3]
Théa Toussaint van Hove-Exalto (1916–2017) and Else Arendsen de Wolff-Exalto (1918–2019) were awarded the Verzetsherdenkingskruis (Resistance Memorial Cross). [4]
In 2012, Els commented on the award: “It’s somewhere in a drawer. I’ve never worn the thing – I wouldn’t even know when to. We weren’t heroes at all. You were just glad you could do something against the moffen [Krauts]. Someone asked you, and so you did it.”
*This article is a English version (slightly adapted and annotated) of “De verzetszussen Thea en Else Exalto” in: Drama op de Dam, 7 mei 1945 (Nuij, Van Santen 2017 – only available in Dutch)
Notes:
- In an additional report by Thea Exalto from 2014, she recalls a “lorry” with an open cargo bed carrying approximately seven German soldiers, whereas the truck (likely an Opel Blitz) in the relevant photograph(s) features a covered cargo area. Thea explicitly states in this report that Ed shot the driver: “Ed schoot de bestuurder dood” (“Ed shot the driver dead”), while her Memoirs simply mention: “Ed shot the driver.” Given the description of the open cargo bed, this must refer to a different truck incident, but corroborating testimonies are lacking. In another photo, taken behind the palace, a deserted “open” Opel Blitz is visible; however, accounts (J.M. Smulders and Trouw, May 8, Amsterdam edition) describe only two occupants in that case.
The account of Friso Kramer (1922–2019), later renowned for designing items such as the green mailbox, as shown in the Andere Tijden program, is corroborated by several photos and a description of the incident in De Waarheid (May 8, 1945):
“From the first floor of the Kasvereniging building, two Wehrmacht vehicles, manned by shooting Nazis, are neutralized. The first shot by a BS-er hits the front tire of the first vehicle; the truck veers onto the curb; two of the Nazis are killed by precise shots. The others raise their hands: ‘Bitte nicht schießen, nicht schießen.’”
[Kasvereniging: later Kas Bank, now partly W Hotels, located between Spuistraat and Singel; author.] - Letter from Else Arendsen de Wolff-Exalto to the author, dated April 9, 2017. The individual referred to as “Bertus” is likely the alias of J.A. Veldman (based on a commemorative certificate for Els’ RVV-1 group). Regarding the trigger for the firefight, Els wrote in the same letter:
“I still don’t know who fired the first shot, which started the whole drama. Sometimes I think – was it a BS member? All those underground workers who had to make decisions under very difficult circumstances for years, judging and acting quickly on their own. You can’t just turn them into disciplined soldiers who follow orders without question. There’s a good chance something went wrong.” - In her Memoirs, Thea noted that she kept a list at home with almost 50 names of friends from hockey, school, and university who had been imprisoned or executed during the war.
- Els used the aliases “Ruth” and “Coby/Cobi Kaptein.”
Sources:
• E. Arendsen de Wolff-Exalto, Een oorlogsgeschiedenis (1998). Unpublished manuscript, available for reference at the NIOD library.
• Thea Toussaint van Hove-Exalto, Memoirs – Second World War (ca. 1982). Unpublished typescript, available for reference at the NIOD library.
• Frank Provoost, “Ik ben geen Heldin,” in Mare, November 22, 2012.
• Letter from Else Arendsen de Wolff-Exalto to the author, dated April 9, 2017.
• Report by Thea Toussaint van Hove-Exalto, received via email from her daughter Renée Hopster on June 17, 2014.
• Andere Tijden, “De bevrijding nabij,” NTR/VPRO, 2014.
