Villa Windekind

This villa was built in 1927 and 1928 for François van 't Sant, chief of police in The Hague and later a confidant of Queen Wilhelmina. He left with her for London in May 1940. His family stayed on in the house until the Germans requisitioned it early in 1942.

 

What moved in was IV B 4, the branch of the security police responsible for tracking down Jews in hiding and the people who helped them. The double villa next door held a card index with names and addresses. Suspects were interrogated in the basement and badly mistreated. The branch was led by Franz Fischer, convicted after the war and long known as one of the Four of Breda.

 

Prisoners from the Scheveningen prison, known to the Dutch as the Orange Hotel, were brought here for questioning and taken back afterwards.

 

Windekind still stands, a national monument and a private home. Across the road, in the wood, lie the bunkers from which the German defence of Scheveningen was directed.

 

The path opposite the villa leads to those bunkers. The next stop lies there.