Former Detention House - Assen

Apart from the usual resistance activities, Knokploeg Noord-Drenthe was involved in arms drops. They were in close contact with the Intelligence Bureau in London. After raiding town halls for identity cards and radios, distribution offices for food stamps and a failed attack on an oil well in Schoonebeek, the request came from London to look for suitable places for arms drops. Those places were found and the drops were prepared. A number of secret agents joined the hit squad from London to supervise the drops and set up other actions to facilitate the Allies' advance. Bridges were blown up and obstacles removed.

The first drops went according to plan. Together with farmers in the area, the KP'ers ensured that the containers were unpacked and dismantled and the waste removed. Despite the Germans smelling danger and the Sicherheitsdienst patrols increasing, London decided to carry out one more drop near Bruntinge. What they did not know is that the secret agents' transmitters had by now been probed out by the occupying forces. So when a group of seven resistance fighters from Knokploeg Noord-Drenthe had processed a container of weapons for the last time on 26 October 1944 and wanted to return to their lodging addresses, they were ambushed by the Sicherheitsdienst who arrested the men and transferred them to the house of detention in Assen.

At the house of detention, the KP men were interrogated and severely beaten for three weeks. Yet the men did not utter a word. All were locked up in isolation, so they could not consult each other and coordinate their stories with each other. It had come to the ears of the members of KP Noord-Drenthe, who were not detained, that the seven were now on the death list and it was rumoured that they would be executed on 12 December. In the resistance house at Kloosterstraat 9, plans were forged to free the prisoners from the death list.

The building that housed the house of detention was built in 1840 and is now a national monument. A plaque has been placed near the house in memory of the victims who were taken from this prison to concentration camps or execution sites during World War II.