©Sammlung Thijs Rinsema
In Meppel, a small town in Holland, employees of a pharmaceutical company formed a resistance group against the occupiers. They concealed persecutees and distributed leaflets and illegal newspapers. The accountant Cornelius Antonides was one of them. In May 1944 he was arrested before the eyes of his wife and two children. The Gestapo deported him and nineteen of his colleagues to the Buchenwald concentration camp by way of the Amersfoort camp. In Buchenwald they were assigned to the detachments performing the heaviest labour. When the camp was cleared, he fled. Seriously ill, he returned home as one of only five surviving “Meppelaars”. He suffered from the consequences of his concentration camp imprisonment until his death.
