1. Willem Aantjes served as the parliamentary leader of the Anti-Revolutionary Party in the House of Representatives from 22 June 1971 until 30 November 1972, a period during which Barend Biesheuvel served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands.
22 Facts About Willem Aantjes
1. 2.
Willem Aantjes became Leader of the Anti-Revolutionary Party and parliamentary leader on 7 March 1973, and served until 25 May 1977; he then became the parliamentary leader of the Christian Democratic Appeal in the House of Representatives, serving from 19 December 1977 until 7 November 1978, when he resigned both his positions.
3.
Willem Aantjes was born on 16 January 1923 in Bleskensgraaf, in the province of South Holland.
4.
Willem Aantjes's father, Klaas Aantjes, was an alderman in Bleskensgraaf and from 1 October 1950 to 14 January 1951 served as mayor of Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht.
5.
On 8 February 1940, Willem Aantjes began working for the postal mail company PTT.
6.
Willem Aantjes later explained that he had not refused selection because if he had, the board of PTT would have sent a married employee in his place.
7.
In September 1944, Willem Aantjes wanted to return to the Netherlands.
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Barend Biesheuvel 8.
Willem Aantjes decided he would follow this route, and enlisted in the Germanic SS.
9.
Willem Aantjes was arrested and imprisoned in Port Natal near Assen, an abandoned psychiatric hospital that had been turned into a work camp by the Nazis.
10.
Willem Aantjes never mentioned his enlistment in the Germanic SS to anyone.
11.
Willem Aantjes became a member of the House of Representatives for the Anti-Revolutionary Party in 1959.
12.
Willem Aantjes was offered the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment in 1967.
13.
Willem Aantjes turned it down, because several party members knew enough about his wartime past to object to his candidacy in public.
14.
On 6 July 1971, Willem Aantjes became leader of the ARP group.
15.
Willem Aantjes played an important role in the merger of the Anti-Revolutionary Party, the Christian Historical Union and the Catholic People's Party into the Christian Democratic Appeal.
16.
Again, Willem Aantjes refused, and used his continuing involvement in the development of the CDA party as reason for his refusal.
17.
Willem Aantjes then became the first leader of the CDA party in the House of Representatives on 20 December 1977.
18.
In 1978, Loe de Jong of the Dutch Institute for War Documentation was confronted with stories about Willem Aantjes's alleged sympathies for Nazism.
19.
Willem Aantjes's staff discovered a note, which showed that Aantjes was mobilized in October 1944 as part of the Waffen-SS.
20.
On 6 November 1978, De Jong announced in a press conference that Willem Aantjes had signed up for the Waffen-SS in World War II, and that he had been a camp guard in Port Natal.
21.
Willem Aantjes argued he had joined the Germanic SS because he believed that this was the only legal way to escape from forced labor in Gustrow.
22.
Willem Aantjes died on 22 October 2015 in the city of Utrecht, Utrecht province, Netherlands.