Excited for Chicago’s Zinefest? Or the Caxton Club’s “Outsiders: Zines, Samizdat, and Alternative Publishing”? This should tide you over: a World War II-era zine, Gesprek (“Conversation”), printed in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. Above is its cover—a painting by Henrik Nicolaas Werkman.
In May of 1940, Werkman, colluding with Friedrich Robert August Henkels, established a clandestine publishing house, De Blauwe Schuit (“The Blue Barge”). They produced 40-some publications, which called for spiritual resistance in the midst of Nazi cruelty.
In March of 1945, the Gestapo arrested Werkman, placing him and nine others before a firing squad. They died on the 10th of April, three days before Groningen was liberated.