Burgemeester Manders

Mayor GJA Manders was transferred to camp Vught on 6 July 1944, together with a number of other mayors. This happened because, despite repeated orders from the occupier, they had not cooperated enough or had refused to demand workers from their municipalities for the construction of coastal defenses on Walcheren and for the construction of a new airport near the village of Rips in de Peel. Only on June 24, 1945, the mayor returned to Leende, emaciated. He had been imprisoned in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. He managed to escape miraculously from the freighter Athen, in which thousands of prisoners were locked up. The camps had been ordered that no prisoner should fall into the hands of the Allies (the enemy).