Boy Ecury

Boy Ecury (23 April 1922 – 6 November 1944) was a member of the Dutch resistance in World War II.

Biography He was born in Oranjestad, Aruba, an island of the Dutch Antilles in a large family. Ecury was born the seventh of thirteen children. His father was a wealthy businessman. His given name was Segundo Jorge Adelberto Ecury, but he went by the nickname Boy and it is by that name that he is remembered.

After a brief stint at a military academy in Puerto Rico, together with his brother, he was sent to study in the Netherlands.

Ecury graduated in 1937 with a diploma in commerce from the Brother of St. Louis School in Oudenbosch, was arrested in Rotterdam by the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and taken to the "Oranjehotel" (a former prison turned into concentration camp). He was interrogated and tortured, but refused to betray his friends. On the following day, he was executed on the Waalsdorpervlakte by a German firing squad. He was 22 years old.

His body was discovered in 1947, and his father brought his son's body back from the Netherlands. He was given a funeral with military honours in Oranjestad. Two years later, a statue of the local hero was erected in the town and still stands today. He is also the subject of an exhibition in the town's war museum and his former family home houses the Archaeological Museum. Forty years after his death, Ecury was posthumously honored by the Dutch government and awarded a Resistance Heroes Commemorative Cross.

Boy Ecury and his father's quest for the truth about his son's last years were subject of a book which was used as the basis for the 2003 movie by Dutch film director Frans Weisz.