Execution on the Woudweg 

The execution in Dokkum was the largest execution by a firing squad during the Second World War in Friesland. A bloody low point in the increasingly fierce battle between the German occupiers and the resistance.  

It was an act of revenge: three days earlier, the resistance attacked a Sicherheitsdienst (SD) car near the village of De Valom, hoping to free the important prisoner transported in this car. In the firefight that ensued, a German SD man and his Belgian driver were killed.  

Artur Albrecht, SD chief in Friesland, was furious and, according to a witness, wanted Dokkum "wiped off the map of the Netherlands." However, his superiors at the SD-Dienststelle in Groningen did not give him permission to do so. Instead, twenty prisoners were taken from prisons in Friesland and Groningen and taken to a meadow on the Woudweg in Dokkum.  

The mayor of the city was even brought from his home to watch. The men had to lie in a row in the snow. They were called forward in groups of five. Then shots rang out. The bodies of the victims had to remain in the snow for 24 hours, as a deterrent to the population. The victims were Frisians and Groningers. Some were active in the resistance, others were on the list candidates for execution as an act of retaliation.  

A monument on the Woudweg in Dokkum commemorates the event. Every year, a wreath-laying ceremony, in which pupils from schools in Dokkum are involved, takes place at this monument.   

After the war, several members of the firing squad were tried for their involvement in the execution and were sentenced to death. So too was Artur Albrecht. He was shot on the Waalsdorpervlakte on 21 March 1952. It was the last death sentence to be carried out in the Netherlands.  

Dokkum on the Dam  

A few years later, on 4 May 1956, Queen Juliana unveiled the National Monument on the Dam in Amsterdam. The monument plays a central role in the annual National Remembrance Day on 4 May which is also always attended by the head of state.  

The monument contains eleven urns containing "blood-soaked earth." Earth from battlegrounds and execution sites from the eleven provinces. A 12th urn with soil from the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) was added later.   

To fill the Frisian urn, earth was taken from the vicinity of Kornwerderzand, a battleground in the May days of 1940. Earth was also removed from execution sites, including the Woudweg in Dokkum and Dronrijp, where thirteen people were shot on 11 April 1945, a few days before the liberation.