Boy Ecury

Boy Ecury and his father's quest for the truth about his son's last years were subject of a book which was used as the basis for the 2003 movie Boy Ecury [nl] by Dutch film director Frans Weisz.

His body was discovered in 1947, and his father brought his son's body back from the Netherlands. He was given a funeral with military honours in Oranjestad. Two years later, a statue of the local hero was erected in the town and still stands today. He is also the subject of an exhibition in the town's war museum and his former family home houses the Archaeological Museum. Forty years after his death, Ecury was posthumously honored by the Dutch government and awarded a Resistance Heroes Commemorative Cross.

Ecury sometimes went along and helped out on covert operations and later became a member of the Resistance Council in Oisterwijk. Like his resistance colleagues and because of the colour of his skin, Ecury had to live a life in hiding, and lived in various places around the Netherlands, working on a number of missions. In 1944, he was in hiding with the underground in the Hague and planning an assassination of an NSB member.

On 5 November 1944, Ecury, who had been one of many betrayed by Kees Bitter [nl], was arrested in Rotterdam by the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and taken to the "Oranjehotel" (a former prison turned into detention and interrogation center). He was interrogated and tortured, but refused to betray his friends. On the following day, he was executed on the Waalsdorpervlakte by a German firing squad. He was 22 years old.

Ecury graduated in 1937 with a diploma in commerce from the Brother of St. Louis School in Oudenbosch, and he did a lot of travelling around the Netherlands. He lived there when World War II started in 1939 and witnessed first hand the Nazi invasion in 1940.

Boy Ecury (23 April 1922 – 6 November 1944) was a member of the Dutch Resistance in World War II.