________________________________________________________________________________________________________
HER HONOR WAS LOYALTY
Mevr. Florentine Sophie
ROST van
TONNINGEN-HEUBEL
14
November 1914 — 24 March 2007
It was
early September 1989. As we sat at a picnic table beside
the Milwaukee River at a former campsite of
the German-American
Volksbund outside the town of Grafton,
Mrs. Rost van Tonningen
related the story of her
life.
We had just come from the nearby USS Liberty
Memorial Library
in that small Wisconsin town, which she wanted
to visit to pay
tribute to the servicemen killed and wounded in
the dastardly 1967
Israeli attack on the American vessel.
Earlier this remarkable woman
had spoken before a gathering at the NEW ORDER's
Nordland site.
"Vrouw" Rost van Tonningen was born Florentine
Sophie Heubel
in Amsterdam, Holland, in 1914, shortly after the outbreak of World
in Amsterdam, Holland, in 1914, shortly after the outbreak of World
War I, the third of four siblings. Her
father, who was of German-
Dutch parentage, was called to serve as an
officer in the German
army. Her mother, of Dutch-Frisian stock, was an artistically inclined
housewife, devoted to her children and her
children.
Despite the war and the absence of her father,
young Florrie —
as she was
called — had a happy early childhood, playing with the
swans, geese,
chickens and two German shepherd dogs, who were
kept in the family garden. It was here
that she developed a lifelong
love of animals and the outdoor world.
After her father's return from the war, the
family moved to the
"Sunshine House" in Hilversum, an idyllic place,
graced by art,
music, and many happy times with friends and
relatives. Going
to school, Florrie had good grades in German,
but her favorite
subjects were biology and drawing. Later
she was sent to England
and Lausanne, Switzerland, to perfect her
foreign language skills.
In 1936 Florrie went to study marine and avian
biology on Helgoland,
the legendary island in the North Sea, where the
famous ethologist,
Prof. Konrad Lorenz, had set up his pioneering
center for animal
behavior research. This was followed by
field study of wildlife in
the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) in
1938.
While all of this was going on, the young Miss
Heubel had a chance
to observe larger social and political events in
Europe. Of particular
interest was the rise of Hitler's party in
Germany and that of a similar
movement in the Netherlands, the NSB —
Nationaal-Socialistische
Beweging. Along with her brother,
Wim, Florrie became part of the
movement's youth branch, the
Jeugdstorm.
After returning to Holland from the Far East,
Florrie became active
in the work of the NSB, where she met her future
husband,
Dr. Meinoud Rost van Tonningen, former assistant
to the general
commissioner for the League of Nations in Vienna
and leading
figure in the NSB after Anton Mussert. In
1940 they were married.
During the war years, Dr. Rost van Tonningen
served as president of
the Bank of the Netherlands as well as
unofficial advisor to Adolf Hitler
on European economic development. At the
end of 1944, he met with
Hitler in Wassenaar on the Dutch coast to
discuss the deteriorating
military situation. While there, the
Führer took the occasion to present
Mrs. Rost van Tonningen with a special bouquet
of white flowers.
In March 1945, with so much at stake, Dr. Rost
van Tonningen left his
position as bank president to serve at the front as a member of the
Waffen-SS. Captured at the end of the war, he was brutally tortured
position as bank president to serve at the front as a member of the
Waffen-SS. Captured at the end of the war, he was brutally tortured
and murdered while in Canadian custody.
His remains were never
turned over to his wife, and so to this day the
case remains under
official seal.
Left with three small children, Florrie was not
spared the cruel
indignities and hardships of the defeated.
But despite the most
horrendous abuse and mistreatment, she managed
to pull her life
together again. Forming a small company,
she set about manufacturing
and marketing wind-powered drying machines for
home use. The
operation was a great success, eventually
employing several dozen
people.
The last decades of Florrie's life were devoted
singlemindedly to
reviving the National Socialist cause. In
a small periodic bulletin,
De Levensboom (The Tree of Life), she published numerous articles
De Levensboom (The Tree of Life), she published numerous articles
in Dutch, German and English.
She also hosted comradeship gatherings regularly
at her home in Velp,
outside of Arnhem, as well as her later
residence in Waasmunster,
Belgium. She provided the venue for
several conferences of the
World Union of National Socialists, including
the one in 1992, where
the WUNS Convention was adopted, formalizing
changes to the
reorganized WUNS structure.
With the passing of
Florentine Rose van Tonningen, there goes someone
who stood close to many
of the events and leading personalities of
the
20th
century, from heads of State, princes of the Church, scientists
and
artists, heroes and scoundrels, those who fought for a New Order
and
those
who opposed it — from Prince Bernhard, Princess Juliana,
Engelbert Dollfuss,
Pope Pius XII, Konrad Lorenz, Willem Mengelberg,
Winifred Wagner and
Otto Skorzeny, to Anton Mussert, Arthur
Seyss-Inquart, H.A.
Rauter, Alfred Rosenberg, Joseph Goebbels,
Rudolf Hess and
Heinrich Himmler, not to mention the leading figure
of the age, Adolf
Hitler. She will be greatly missed by all who knew her.
—
Matt Koehl
For a full
account of Mrs. Rost van Tonningen's life, read her illustrated memoir,
Triumph and Tragedy,
available postage paid for $25 ($29 non-US) from:
NS Publications,
PO Box 188, Wyandotte MI
48192.
Continuing the fight for a better world
—
NEW ORDER
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PO Box
Milwaukee WI 53227
http://www.theneworder.org
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