Gerrit Roorda

Gerrit Roorda (4 September 1890 - 9 February 1977) was a Dutch politician and communist activist. From 1927 to 1958, he occupied various functions in Friesland and the municipality of Opsterland, for the Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN), the Socialist Union (Netherlands) and the Pacifist Socialist Party (PSP), becoming known as one of the most well-known leftist figures in Friesland of his time. Early life

Gerrit Roorda was born on 4 September 1890 in Tijnje to Jacobus Roorda, a schoolteacher active in the local Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP), and Anna Jantina van Vreningen. At the age of 13, he became carpenter's apprentice, working in the Ruhr area for several years before emigrating to the United States in 1910. He settled in Sheldon, Iowa, where he operated a carpentry business with his future brother-in-law, after the United States joined World War I Roorda refused to serve due to his pacifist convictions, and was arrested and subsequently assigned to the United States Coast Guard in San Francisco. In 1923, he married Pietertje Loopstra, with whom he would have one daughter.

During World War II, Roorda had initially been interned by the Dutch government, but was released following the Dutch capitulation on 15 May 1940. He became involved in spreading an illegal communist newspaper, and was imprisoned by the Germans in Schoorl transit camp, being released in June 1941 after five weeks on the promise he would refrain from politics. In 1944, he was arrested again for helping people in hiding, but managed to escape from his imprisonment, going into hiding himself until the Allied liberation in April 1945.

Roorda nevertheless remained highly popular in Opsterland, and when he joined the Socialist Union (SU) in 1950 he was able to leverage his local popularity to earn the SU a seat in the Friesland provincial council. He left the party in 1956 after it condemned the Soviet invasion of Hungary, but after the SU's dissolving followed most of its members into the Pacifist Socialist Party (PSP), which he would remain a member of until 1966. and remained a prominent opponent of the war throughout the 1960s and 1970s. He also helped lead an umbrella organisation supporting Frisian theatre.

Gerrit Roorda died on 9 February 1977 in Tijnje.