Wartime lovestory
Jan Kloos and Diet Barendregt were madly in love during the war. They had known each other from childhood, but in the spring of 1944, they ran into each other more or less by chance. Jan Kloos was born in Dordrecht but came to work in Wageningen as a biologist. He was active in the resistance in Wageningen, where he lived, and Dordrecht. In the resistance, they met again and, as an unsuspected couple in love, carried out espionage activities together.
Due to betrayal, the newlyweds were rounded up by the Germans two weeks after the wedding. Jan was shot on 30 January 1945. Diet, now a 20-year-old widow, became even more involved with the resistance. She became head courier, arranged arms transports and continued her care for Jewish people in hiding. "Diet's story represents a bigger picture: women as resistance fighters in wartime. That really is an underexposed theme," says Paul Sars, who, as a researcher at Radboud University, is the initiator of this project.