Nieuwlande

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For the drowned village in Zeeland, see Nieuwlande.

1 History
2 Nieuwlande in WWII
3 External links

Nieuwlande is a small Dutch village. As of 1 January 2004, the population proper is 1250. It is in Drenthe province. In Drenthe dialect it is called Neilaande. It is mostly in Hoogeveen municipality.

Nieuwlande is on peat land in the south of Drenthe. It arose where five municipalities meet: Oosterhesselen (by far the largest part), Dalen, Coevorden, Hardenberg, and Hoogeveen. For this reason a book about Nieuwlande's history of the village had the catching title "Nieuwlande, village with five burgomasters". This situation obstructed to a great extent the extension possibilities and an efficient governing board: for many municipalities it was but an unimportant edge area. At the municipal division of Drenthe on 1 January 1998 it was chosen for this reason for the village to be in one municipality, by moving over to the municipality border of Hoogeveen about 1.5 kilometre to the east. The small part in the municipality of Hardenberg (province Overijssel) was however not concerned at this; and also beyond the new municipality border some inhabitants of Nieuwlande still lived in the new fusion municipality Coevorden. The border now however no longer goes straight through the village

Nieuwlande has a new Dutch Reformed church, a Reformed church from 1913, and a church of the meeting of the gelovigen. It also has: sport fields, a public and Protestant primary school, a hypermarket with mail agency, its own speeltuinvereniging and some other company and public places. The rural area is characterised by agriculture area (peat diggings) and some nature reserves in scrub and heathland or peat.

[edit] History

The legal beginning of Nieuwlande was on 30 March 1816. On this date the markegenoten of Zwinderen sold a parcel of 150 morgen of fen to Rudolph Otto van Echten and to Warner de Jonge and Hugo Christiaan Carsten in Hoogeveen.

[edit] Nieuwlande in WWII

Nieuwlande is famous for its collective sheltering of Jews in 1942 and 1943, during the Holocaust.

The village inhabitants resolved that every household would hide one Jewish family or at least one Jew. Given the collective nature of the activity, the danger to the village was small; there was no fear of denunciation since all the village dwellers were partners to this act. All 117 inhabitants of that village were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.

Arnold Douwes, the son of the local pastor, had never had very much to do with Jews or Judaism, but when antisemitic measures were introduced, he threw himself body and soul into the effort to help Jews on the run by convincing the local inhabitants to give shelter to the hiding families. In addition, the inhabitants provided the fugitives with food, new identification papers, and financial support.

In 1988 a monument to honor the village of Nieuwlande was built in Yad Vashem, Jerusalem.