Helena Kuipers-Rietberg

Princess Wilhelmina on 4 May 1955, at the monument for Kuipers-Rietberg in Winterswijk. Statue by Gerrit Bolhuis.

Helena Theodora Kuipers-Rietberg (26 May 1893 – 27 December 1944) was a Dutch resistance member who played an important role during World War II, when she was one of the driving forces of a national underground organization that supported those who were hiding from the German occupying forces. She was known as "Tante Riek", or "Aunt Riek".

Early life Helena Kuipers was born on 26 May 1893 to grain merchants and millers Hendrik Rietberg and Clara Christina Theodora Dulfer in Winterswijk, as the fourth child in a Dutch Reformed family. She attended the Hogere burgerschool where she met her future husband, Piet Kuipers (1892–1978), also a merchant in grain. After graduation she worked in her father's office, and her husband bought into the company. They had two sons and three daughters. Kuipers was also active in local organizations, and in 1932 co-founded the Gereformeerde Vrouwenbeweging, an organization of Dutch Reformed women, and starting in 1937 she was on the board of the newly founded Bond van Gereformeerde Vrouwenvereenigingen in Nederland, an organization which united all Dutch Reformed women's organizations in the country. This allowed her to build a national network, which would benefit her later during the German occupation.

Resistance Kuipers-Rietberg, who lived near the German border, realized early in the 1930s what the rise to power of Hitler meant. Soon after the German occupation of the Netherlands her family joined the Dutch resistance. She started on a small scale, taking in Jewish onderduikers (people who had to go underground to avoid arrest and persecution). Her husband went into the countryside to aid onderduikers and escaped prisoners of war. After the start of large-scale allied bombings of Germany, in March 1943, this also included members of Allied bombing squads shot down over the Achterhoek, who had to be hidden and then moved back to England. Funds for all these activities came from one of a number of illegal sources, which later were united as the Nationaal Steun Fonds, for which she became the paymaster for her area, the Achterhoek. Her code name was "Tante Riek", or "Aunt Riek". Many of the men the organization helped were called up for forced labor, the Arbeitseinsatz; of the 350,000 people that had to go into hiding during the war, the LO helped two thirds.

Legacy

Tante Riek is remembered in various places. On 4 May 1955, in Winterswijk, a monument in her honor was revealed by Princess Wilhelmina. The statue, on the square named for her, depicts a young woman who protects a young deer, symbol of those who were persecuted during the war. Nearby, at her old house, in the Willinkstraat, a plaque remembers her. A framed portrait of Kuipers-Rietberg is on the late Queen Wilhelmina's desk in Het Loo Palace.

In 2017 she was featured in an episode of the TV show Het was oorlog, aired by Omroep MAX.