Walraven van Hall became one of the most important figures in the Dutch resistance during the Second World War, using his banking expertise to secretly finance underground networks operating under Nazi occupation in the Netherlands. At a time when anti-Jewish measures, arrests, and deportations spread across occupied Europe, Van Hall helped create a financial system that supported thousands of people in hiding, resistance groups, and families affected by the occupation. This documentary explores the life of the man later known as the “Banker of the Resistance.” Born into a prominent Amsterdam banking family in 1906, Walraven van Hall initially chose a different path, training as an officer in the merchant marine before eventually entering the financial world. After Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940 and Rotterdam suffered devastating bombing, Dutch society rapidly changed under occupation. Restrictions against Jewish citizens intensified, resistance groups formed, and many Dutch citizens faced difficult choices.
Working together with his brother Gijs van Hall and other members of the Dutch underground, Van Hall helped establish the National Support Fund, a secret organisation that raised and distributed enormous sums of money throughout occupied Holland. The network supported resistance operations, aided Jews in hiding, helped Allied pilots, and financed underground activities across the country. Through coded systems, forged financial documents, and covert transfers, Van Hall and his associates carried out what later became known as one of the largest financial operations of the war. The film also examines the German occupation of the Netherlands, the February Strike of 1941, the role of Westerbork transit camp, and the wider Dutch resistance movement during the war. It follows Van Hall’s final months under occupation and the legacy he left behind after the liberation of the Netherlands in 1945.
Narrator: Marchand Steenkamp.
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