Riet van Grunsven
Dutch resistance member (1918-2004)
Maria Catharina van Grunsven (6 September 1918 – 1 March 2004), also known as Riet van Grunsven or Riet van de Haterd-van Grunsven, was an armed member of the Dutch Resistance during World War II. One of 21 people who became "line-crossers", special agents who helped to maintain a secret connection between occupied and liberated Netherlands across the waterways of the Biesbosch and the Merwede, she operated as a courier for part of the larger Biesbosch resistance group, and the Albrecht intelligence group. During this resistance work, she was given the aliases "Ice Block" and "Trouble".
In recognition of her valor, she was honored with a personal audience with Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands in 1946, and was awarded the Bronzen Leeuw (the Bronze Lion), which was personally presented to her by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands in 1949.
Formative years
Born on 6 September 1918 in Geffen, in what was the Maasdonk province (and in what is now a section of the North Brabant province of the Netherlands), Maria Catharina (“Riet”) van Grunsven was the eldest child of her family. Her father was a contractor who engaged in animal husbandry, raising chickens and the occasional pig while also producing milk and cheese from the family's cow to help support his family. He was also reportedly was a firearms enthusiast who also enjoyed archery.
World War II
Maria Catharina (“Riet”) van Grunsven and her father both joined the Dutch Resistance when World War II broke out in Europe. Immediately becoming an armed freedom fighter, she initially operated in the Netherlands province of North Brabant, gathering intelligence, delivering medication to Allied and Resistance troops in the north and performing courier duties for her resistance cell while also helping to free captive Dutch citizens from the prison at Mariënhof, the Herzogenbusch concentration camp in Vught, and Kamp Sint-Michielsgestel.
Meanwhile, her father assisted the Landelijke Knokploegen (the National Knokploegen or LKP), a resistance organization established by the National Organization for Assistance to Abduction (LO), which falsified identity cards and ration cards as part of the group's efforts to help Dutch citizens evade persecution and capture by Nazi officials. Hiding soldiers, businessmen and political figures in the attic of a secret annex he had built into the van Grunsven home, which was located in one of Geffen's more secluded areas, he then hid more at-risk individuals in a shelter he had constructed outside between two wooded hills.
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