On March 6, 1945, members of the Dutch resistance shot Hanns Albin Rauter, the higher SS and police leader of the occupied Netherlands, severely wounding him. He survived the assassination attempt by pretending to be dead and was promptly taken to a hospital. Curt Bloch, hiding in his refuge, apparently received only news of the assassination attempt and assumed that Rauter had been killed. This led to the creation of the satirical obituary In Memoriam Rauter †.