George John Lionel Maduro (born in Willemstad (Curaçao), July 15, 1916; died Dachau concentration camp, February 9, 1945) was a Dutch student who served as an officer in the 1940 Battle of the Netherlands and distinguished himself in repelling the German attack on The Hague.
The miniature city of Madurodam is named after him, as well as the Maduroplein area in Scheveningen, in The Hague.
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Maduro was born in Curaçao, the only son of Joshua and Rebecca Maduro, a couple of Sephardic Jewish descent. He was 23 and a law student at Leiden University when Germany invaded The Netherlands on May 10, 1940. By a royal order on November 21, 1939 Maduro had been previously appointed to second-lieutenant-reserve in the Dutch Cavalry. In the Battle of the Netherlands he was quartered with the Dutch Hussars in The Hague as a reserve officer. Under his command German ground troops stationed in Rijswijk were defeated and parachutists were captured.
On May 15, 1940, upon the capitulation of the Dutch military, Maduro was captured by German troops and jailed in the Oranje Hotel in Scheveningen.
When he was released a half year later, the German occupation forces had required that all Jews wear the Star of David. Maduro refused to do so and joined the resistance movement. He tried to help Allied pilots escape to the United Kingdom via Spain, but was captured and placed in jail again. Managing to escape, he rejoined the Dutch resistance but was betrayed by a Belgian collaborator and captured again, this time by the German Gestapo. By way of a jail in Saarbrücken, he was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp. In February 1945, barely three months prior to the liberation of the camp by American troops, Maduro died of typhus. It is presumed that he is buried in the cemetery of the camp.
In 1946 Maduro was posthumously awarded the medal of Knight 4th-class of the Military Order of William, the highest and oldest military decoration in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, for the valor he had demonstrated in the Battle of the Netherlands against German troops.[1]
He is the only Dutch person of Antillian descent to receive this honor.
A documentary about Maduro's life was made in 2001 by Alfred Edelstein.
After World War II, Maduro's parents provided seed money for a miniature city called Madurodam that opened in 1952 in The Hague. Madurodam is considered by the Maduro family to be a monument in honor of their only son. In 1993 a scale model of Maduro's birthplace was built in the park.