Three directors detained; no outcome found in the digitised press
In August 1945 three directors of P. van Reeuwijk were detained on a suspicion of collaboration that the newspaper attached to the firm itself. The firm's link with Rochussenstraat 169 was limited to temporary showrooms in 1940, so this notice belongs to its post-war company history and does not prove it still occupied the address. On 2 August, three months after the liberation, Het Parool reported the detentions in an item four lines long. Here is the full English translation, with the names as printed, followed by what the sources we searched show and leave open.
What the notice says
> P. van Reeuwijk detained > The board of the N.V. Company for Home Furnishing, P. van Reeuwijk — namely Messrs P. van Reeuwijk, > N. van Reeuwijk and Mr O. D. Popken — have been detained pending further investigation, in connection > with the suspicion of collaboration resting on this firm.
Those four lines are all there is, so the wording counts. The men were aangehouden tot nader onderzoek, detained pending further investigation, and the notice says outright that the suspicion rested on deze firma, the firm. Whether investigators also suspected any of the men personally, it does not say. The notice records no charge, no proceeding and no finding. A detention for investigation opens a question and leaves it unanswered.
The names appear as "P. van Reeuwijk," "N. van Reeuwijk" and "O. D. Popken." These are the forms printed in the source, kept as they stand; the English translation makes no OCR corrections to them. A shareholders' report of 11 August 1942 gives a different board: P. N. van Reeuwijk as president-director, with K. van Reeuwijk, J. A. van Reeuwijk and C. D. Popken as directors. The mismatch does not tell us who was detained in 1945, and the earlier list must not be used to quietly correct the printed names. It fixes the formal board on one date three years before. It proves neither that the board stayed the same into 1945 nor anything about the investigation.
In a 1971 photograph J. M. van Reeuwijk-van Walsum, the firm's directrice, is at work in its post-war showroom on the Binnenwegplein. That later description of her day-to-day role does not displace the formal directors named in the wartime company record.
What the record does, and does not, contain
The documented search of the digitised press for 1945–49 found no later report of a prosecution, tribunal ruling, conviction, confiscation or Beheersinstituut administration after the detention. What it did find was the firm going about its business. By 10 December 1945 it was signing a notice to shareholders. Shareholders' meetings were advertised in June 1946 and June 1947. Over 1946 it paid an eight per cent dividend, with the shares quoted at 156, and in May 1948 nine per cent on the old shares and two and a half on the new. A Popken was listed as directeur by June 1948 and again at the staff jubilees of 1954 and 1955. The December 1945 notice is signed only De Directie, the management, without naming any director.
The 1947 notice shows that eight per cent payout over 1946 and the shares at 156. Pieter Nicolaas van Reeuwijk died on 22 May 1949, and the press called him the firm's director.
P. N. van Reeuwijk †. In the night from Saturday to Sunday, Mr P. N. van Reeuwijk, director of the N.V. Furnishing Company P. van Reeuwijk, died suddenly at his home on the Oostzeedijk in Rotterdam. Mr van Reeuwijk was 59 years old. The crowning of 35 years of hard work — the opening of the new building now rising on the Oude Binnenweg, with which he had hoped to realise large-scale future plans — he was not permitted to witness. It was around 1914 that Mr van Reeuwijk began selling furniture in a small basement dwelling. The business flourished, and so, some years later, he opened a small shop in the Kipstraat. This became the modest beginning of a large retail complex, formed over the years by buying up adjacent plots and even a school building. On 27 April 1929 a huge fire — for which nearly all of Rotterdam's fire-fighting equipment turned out — reduced this complex to ashes. A new shop building then rose on the same spot, but it fell victim to the violence of war in the May days of 1940. The business was continued in a large temporary building on the Nieuwe Binnenweg.
The firm turns up in one separate prosecution report. In July 1947 A. A. Ebelie, aged thirty-two, was described before the Bijzonder Gerechtshof as a former clerk at P. van Reeuwijk and a Landwacht onderschaarleider. A six-year sentence was demanded in a case about his conduct as a Landwachter, and the cited report does not establish a verdict or conviction. His case concerns one former employee and supplies no finding about the firm or its directors.
The limit, and what would settle it
The Nationaal Archief's Centraal Archief Bijzondere Rechtspleging may hold material that could answer the question, though the sources reviewed here do not establish that a particular company card or case file exists. The Nationaal Archief also holds the firm's known Rotterdam Handelsregister file, which is not digitised. Neither has been consulted for this question, and the digitised press cannot settle it alone.
The press sweep for 1945–49 paired the firm's name, and names then linked with its board, with terms such as tribunaal, bijzonder gerechtshof, zuivering, Nederlandsch Beheersinstituut and politieke delinquenten. It found no report of an outcome. It did not, however, cover every periodical page or either archive holding, so no wider negative conclusion follows. Until the relevant archive material is found and read, the documented digitised-press search can report only that it found no outcome.