Mathias Hubertus Verheijden

Additional information:

Grave location: Section AL, Row 1, Grave 23

Son of Peter Matthias Verheijden and Maria Anna Zangers. Widow: Anita Steinwender

Mathias Hubertus Verheijden volunteered for the Waffen-SS on 23 June 1941. Two days later, he arrived in Hamburg, where he undertook three months’ training before being sent to the front. Via Kraków, Danzig, Riga and Lithuania, he arrived in Russia in early January, where on 20 February 1942 he was assigned as an SS-Schütze to the 2nd Company of the ‘Niederlande’ Volunteer Legion.

During his time in Russia, Mathias Hubertus Verheijden was wounded by a bullet to his right shoulder and eventually ended up in Dresden Hospital. In January 1943, he returned to the Netherlands where, due to his previous injuries, he was employed as a doorman in civilian clothes by the Ortskommandant of Eindhoven at the Grand Hotel Restaurant Royal on Dommelstraat. On 22 April 1943, Mathias Hubertus Verheijden returned to active service with the Waffen-SS and, following a short training course in Hamburg, was assigned as an SS-Sturmmann to the Genesenden Kompanie of the Ersatz-Bataillon der Legionen 11. In September 1943, Mathias Hubertus Verheijden was stationed in The Hague, serving with the Vlissingen fortifications unit. In late 1944–early 1945, Mathias Hubertus Verheijden decided to desert and stayed with the van der Vlist family at 20 Korte Langstraat in Leiden until May 1945; after which he left for his brother-in-law H. van Eeten’s residence at 19 Galvanistraat in Eindhoven, where he remained until his arrest on 15 May 1945. Following his arrest, Mathias Hubertus Verheijden was sent to the former Vught concentration camp, where Germans, collaborators and war criminals were being interned at the time.

Due to the heavy fighting, the German retreat and the Allied advance, a great deal of ammunition had been left behind; consequently, it was possible that there was still a significant amount of unexploded ordnance in the ground. In the Neerkant area, there were also various ‘Schrapnellmine’ or S-mines which, once triggered, would burst into the air and explode at hip height, sending all manner of sharp pieces of steel flying in all directions.

There were so many mines in the Peel that it would take the small group of mine clearance experts years to clear them all. In Vught, Germans, collaborators and war criminals were interned in the former concentration camp, and because there were so many mines in the Peel, volunteers were sought there for the dangerous work in the Peel.

Mathias Hubertus Verheijden also volunteered, and after a short training course he was taken from Vught to Deurne every day, along with other Dutch SS members, by camp guards from Camp Vught. Sergeant Jean Dirven, one of the leaders of the group of mine clearance workers, had nothing good to say about these guards. Jean Dirven discovered that, on the return journey in the evenings, the camp guards would take their prisoners off the lorries in Helmond’s Markt and make them hop across the square and perform other gymnastic exercises for the amusement of onlookers. Furthermore, the SS men in the camp were beaten more often than they were fed; there were even instances where two of them fainted whilst clearing mines. Jean Dirven later learnt that the SS men were given a piece of bread in the morning and had to make that last the whole day, which is why they fainted from hunger. Jean Dirven managed to convince the mayor of Deurne that he could not continue working under such conditions, because if someone stepped on a mine at the wrong moment, several mine clearers could die. From then on, at the expense of the municipality of Deurne, Jean Dirven was able to collect half a loaf of bread for each mine clearer from Schiks’ bakery in Stationsstraat.

Normally, the mine clearance workers worked in pairs side by side, with the next pair following at a distance of about ten metres. Care was taken to ensure that their probing overlapped. Behind Sjaak Mennen’s house, N108 in Neerkant, safety was momentarily overlooked and the mine clearance workers were standing too close together in a small group. They are said to have been intending to pick fruit from the fruit trees when a mine was stepped on. Three SS men, including Mathias Hubertus Verheijden, Antonius Johanne van Berkom and Cornelius van Koolwijk, were killed in the incident. A Dutch soldier, Herman Schutte, a colleague of Jean Dirven, took a few more steps… said something and collapsed, dead. He had a small wound in the centre of his chest; a piece of shrapnel had struck him in the heart.

Mathias Hubertus Verheijden was buried in the cemetery at the former concentration camp in Vught, Section A, Row 3, Grave 45, from where he was reburied on 19 June 1968 to the German Military Cemetery in Ysselsteyn.

A comprehensive file from the ‘Waffen-SS’ and a document from the ‘SS Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt’ concerning Mathias Hubertus Verheijden, as well as a transfer report containing identification details drawn up by the Identification and Recovery Service, may be available for inspection from the author.

Death Register

Dutch SS members from Camp Vucht clearing mines, probably somewhere on the Schans in the Neerkant. They are being guarded by Dutch soldiers.

Below is a photograph of a Sprengmine. One of the many types of mines that were cleared in the Peel.

Report by Captain J.T. de Koningh

Sergeant Jean Dirven