Herman Laatsman

Johan Herman Laatsman de Bailleul (September 14, 1903, Ghent – May 28, 1976, The Hague) was a Dutch diplomat with a distinguished Resistance record during the Second World War. For his contributions to the Allied cause, particularly as a member of the Dutch-Paris Escape Line, Laatsman was named a Ridder van Orde de Oranje-Nassau, a Commandeur de la Legion d’Honneur, merite international pour courage et devouément, and awarded the US Medal of Freedom with Silver Palm. The citation for the Medal of Freedom mentions that he embarked on a “self-imposed mission with outstanding success” and enabled the escape of at least 112 Allied aviators. Self-imposed mission Herman Laatsman took a position as a civil servant at the Dutch Consulate in Paris in September 1939. He began his resistance career almost as soon as the Nazis occupied Paris in May 1940. Laatsman travelled to the Netherlands illegally, disguised as a dishwasher on an international train, in order to bring money to France to pay the pensions and benefits due to Dutch citizens in France. Laatsman also helped Dutchmen who had been sent to build submarines at French ports to escape the forced labor and return home. In 1941 he belonged to a short-lived French escape line led by Olivier Giran that evacuated Jews and young men to Switzerland. Laatsman was also involved in clandestine intelligence work with Major Baron Jacob KJ Brantsen, liaison officer between intelligence services of the Dutch and French armies at the Dutch Embassy in Paris. In addition, he had an intelligence connection inside the German Embassy in the person of Karl-Heinz Gerstner who provided confidential information and true-false papers through a Dutch student at the Sorbonne, Suzanne Hiltermann.