28 2GM Monday May 2 2022 | the times
Wo r l d
More than 70 years after Cornelis Piet-
er “Kees” Kreukniet was murdered by
the Nazis and buried in a mass grave the
remains of the Dutch resistance hero
have been identified.
DNA test samples from Joop Kreuk-
niet, his great-nephew, established that
previously unidentified remains were
his. They will be reburied in a grave that
honours his heroism. “He deserves it,”
Kreukniet said. “I’m glad to finally
know what happened to my great-
uncle.”
The identification came days before
May 5, a Dutch national holiday to
mark the country’s liberation from
German occupation. The body was re-
covered in March 1947 from an ano-
nymous grave with nine others in the
dunes of Waalsdorpervlakte on the
Netherlands coast.
There was no means of identifying
the body and it was buried as an “un-
known Dutchman” and resistance
fighter in the national field of honour.
The Nazis had said only that Kreukniet
died of pneumonia in the Schevenin-
gen prison, near the Hague.
Kreukniet was born in 1894 in the vil-
lage of Stokkum but lived in the Hague.
He was married without children and
joined the resistance to fight the Nazis.
He was arrested on October 8 1944,
aged 50, for publishing the resistance
newspaper Ons Morgenblad, or Our To-
morrow. He vanished after his arrest.
A spokesman for the Hague’s munici-Netherlands
Bruno Waterfield
pal authority said Kreukniet oversaw
the printing of the resistance journal,
with a circulation of 3,500.
“It is important that we pass on these
war stories to the coming generations,
especially now that there are fewer andfewer witnesses,” the official said. In-
vestigators recently followed a trail of
clues found with his body ten years ago,
including dentures and rags of clothing.
The Royal Netherlands Army’s sal-Cornelis Pieter
Kreukniet printed
a resistance paperRiot police were targeted with stones and fireworks in Nantes, right, and in Paris,Violence flared during the May Day pa-
rade in Paris yesterday, with President
Macron given a taste of the civil unrest
he fears will mark his second term.
Seven days after his presidential
election victory over Marine Le Pen,
the nationalist, the capital suffered van-
dalism, looting and assaults on police.
Gérald Darmanin, the interior minis-
ter, said at least 45 people were arrested
and eight police officers were injured.
Left-wing activists dressed in black
and chanting “no to capitalism” started
fires in the streets and attacked busi-
nesses including banks, a travel agency
and a McDonald’s restaurant. Several
shops were looted after their front
doors and windows were smashed,
including an organic supermarket and
a computer store.
About 1,500 officers had been
deployed in Paris but were told initially
to stand aside as the interior ministry
sought to avoid inflaming tensions. The
order was reversed as violence escalat-
ed, leading to clashes between riot
police and protesters who threw
stones and other projectiles. The
officers responded with tear gas
and stun grenades.
In east Paris a fireman working
to extinguish a blaze was attacked
by protesters trying to pull the
hose out of his hands. The Paris
fire brigade described the
attack as a “disgrace” and
an act of “incompre-
hensible savagery”.
There were similar
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being stopped last week.
The actor acknowledged that there
had been a “difference of opinion” with
the woman, who has not been named,
but declined to explain what happened.
Murray told CNBC: “The world is dif-
ferent than it was when I was a little kid.
What I always thought was funny as a
kid isn’t necessarily the same as what’s
funny now... Times change so it’s im-
portant for me to figure it out.”
Murray, 71, said he and the woman
were “trying to make peace with each
other”, but did not say when theDutch resistance hero is identified in Nazi mass grave I’m out of touch,
Macron struggles
to fill cabinet jobs
as violence erupts
scenes of chaos in Nantes and Rennes,
in Brittany, where activists set fire to
bins and other street fixtures. Police
responded with tear gas and water
cannon, sending protesters fleeing
through the centre of the city.
Darmanin denounced the “hood-
lums” responsible for the “unaccept-
able violence”.
With clashes becoming increasingly
frequent during left-wing protests in
France, including at May Day parades
in recent years, the police approach was
being questioned last night. Some said
the decision to stand back at first had
been a mistake and that officers should
have intervened faster.
Interior ministry sources said the
turmoil was the work of a small and
radical minority in otherwise peaceful
parades but it caused concern among
Macron’s advisers. Despite his electoral
triumph, he is convinced that French
society remains a tinderbox ready to
explode into strikes, protests and riots
at the first opportunity.
With Le Pen, 53, obtaining 13.2 mil-
lion votes in the presidential run-off,
the best result ever achieved by a
French populist, and Jean-Luc
Mélenchon, 70, the radical
left leader, picking up 7.7 mil-
lion in the first round,
Macron knows that a vast
swathe of the population is
resolutely hostile to him.
Mélenchon appears particu-
larly keen to whip up opposition
to the 44-year-old centrist
president before the parlia-
mentary elections in June.
He told demonstrators in
the Paris parade yesterday
to continue their struggle
against “the ruling class”.
He added: “Don’t forget.
Nothing has ever been
given to you. Everything
has always had to bewrested from them.” He is seeking to
form a coalition with moderate left-
wing parties in the hope of securing a
parliamentary majority in June.
That would enable him to become
prime minister, giving rise to what he
described as a “fiery” cohabitation with
Macron. He has pledged a policy of
“disobedience” within the European
Union and “freedom for workers” in
France.
He blamed the May Day parade
chaos yesterday on Didier Lallement,
65, the Paris police chief, saying that he
knew violence was likely and had done
nothing to prevent it.
In the face of turbulent social and
political currents, Macron is keen to
pacify the country. He cast himself as a
zealous reformer when he came to
office five years ago but is now offering
a far more consensual face in a bid to
woo the working classes away from
Le Pen and Mélenchon. He is said to
want a prime minister capable of sym-
bolising his search for national unity as
he tries to heal France’s wounds.
It is a measure of his concern that he
has told aides he needs a modern
version of Henry IV to run the govern-
ment. Henry, a Protestant, converted to
Catholicism after succeeding to the
throne in 1589 and went on to calm the
wars of religion that were tearing
France apart at the time.
Just as he was able to bridge the reli-
gious divide, so Macron wants a prime
minister capable of appealing to the
centre-left without alienating the
centre-right. He said last week he was
looking for “someone attached to the
social question, the environmental
question and the question of
production”.
Clément Beaune, Macron’s Europe
minister, said he was also keen for a
woman to get the job.
Macron, who describes himself as
“profoundly feminist”, gave half of thecabinet posts to women in his first term.
But critics pointed out that men got
almost all the top jobs, including that of
prime minister along with the eco-
nomy, interior and foreign affairs port-
folios. Only the armed forces was given
to a woman, Florence Parly, 58.
Macron’s presidential staff was alsodominated by men, notably Alexis
Kohler, 49, the publicity-shy but power-
ful secretary-general of the Élysée.
This time, Macron is said to be deter-
mined to find a woman who ticks all the
boxes, despite scepticism among his
advisers who say it is like “looking for a
five-legged sheep”. His hunt got off to avage and identification service began a
search for his relatives. Els Schiltmans,
the service’s identification expert, said
they trawled genealogical websites.
“We found his great-nephew,” she said.
“He was willing to give his DNA.”
Another 24 bodies of people execut-
ed by the Nazis in the sand dunes are
still unknown. They are buried on the
Loenen field of honour with 125 other
unknown resistance fighters.
“There are still thousands of un-
known or missing victims throughout
the Netherlands,” Schiltmans said. “We
hope that families of people who are
still missing from the war will report to
us so that we can see together whether
we can solve more of these mysteries.”
The resistance saved at least 300,000
people from arrest by the Nazis.Hugh TomlinsonPresident Macron
wants a prime
minister who can
bridge the bitter
divide between
left and right
France
Adam Sage Paris