The liberation of the village Voorthuizen

Following the interviews concerning the “Liberation of Zeumeren”, Hennie and Kees Mulderij invited in October 2009 some more eye witnesses, this time people from Voorthuizen centre. They were invited to share their experiences and to be interviewed. The people present came mostly from the street where also Kees himself had lived during the liberation in 1945, when Kees was still a boy. The Kerkstraat is the street where most of the civilian victims fell, in a small area near the “Ring” and the German headquarters in the Reformed Protestant School. Apart from the school also many houses were ruined.

During this meeting we could use a large map (A) which we borrowed from the Council Archives, of the centre of the village which was - at that time just after the war - still rather small. All the houses and other buildings from that time were marked on the map. We had colored the main roads so that each eye witness could easily recognize the points of interest and could point out where they had lived. The locations of their homes and the sites of the various events have been numbered by us afterwards, in order to be able to refer to these locations in the written eye witness reports.

Picture of the interviewed people at the Monument on the Ring.

For this story the following people were interviewed, see pictures and map of the village just after the war:

Top l.t.r.: Nico Wilgenburg (11); Henk Volkers (13); Kees Bakker (30); Drikus van Beek (26) Bakkersweg; Jan van Galen (27) Harremaatweg and Frans Druyf (21).

Front l.t.r.: Mariek van de Meij-Vaarkamp (4); Mien van den Broek (29); Marie van Elten-Zandbergen (34a) and Bertha van de Fliert-Zandbergen (34b) both from Lankeren (35).

Also Kees (12) and Hennie (36) Mulderij, Nico Verbrugh (23) and Evert Jan Vermeer (28) who are not shown on the group picture but are found in the pictures in their eye witness reports.

 

Henk Volkers, Frans Druyf, Drikus van Beek, Jan van Galen, Evert Jan Vermeer and Marie and Bertha Zandbergen have been interviewed at the sites of the events they relate.

The by now 90 years old Frans Druyf had been a farm hand at the farm Blankensgoed (21b) during the war and the liberation. We picked him up from his present home at NEBO in Barneveld and he was able, with walking aids and all, to relate his dramatic story also on site of the former land of Blankensgoed.

 

Story of a tragic event during the war

Frans Druyf was not only an eye witness to the big fire at Blankensgoed but he also witnessed the execution of Paul Kamphuis when he happened to pass that point with the horses and the plow on his way back from the field to Blankensgoed at lunch time. Frans told about the execution of the brave resistance fighter Paul Kamphuis who had been betrayed and then shot behind the Reformed School. Kamphuis was punished for hiding the guns that had been dropped at the heath land Appelse Hei, hiding them at his farm (33) on the Noordenweg. Each year at the Commemoration of the Dead on May 4^th at the cemetery there are also flowers for Paul Kamphuis’ grave. The wording on the sign next to the war monument (37) on the Kerkstraat, only a few meters from the Reformed School where the execution took place, is also dedicated to this betrayed war hero from Voorthuizen. The design of the monument made in 1948 and the moving text clarifying the monument are by the hands of the well-known artist from Voorthuizen, former Jo de Nooy, who was well acquainted with Paul Kamphuis. For this text we refer to the website of Voorthuizen Liberation 1945 at: www.oudbarneveld.nl

Later in this report we will come back to the story of Blankensgoed, the Ring, the School and the Monument all at this most severely hit area of the northern part of the Kerkstraat.

But for now we will present the eye witness reports of what happened at Maasjesland and events during the liberation in other parts of the village Voorthuizen.

Map dated short after the war with numbered houses and other objects in Voorthuizen according to the numbering in the interviews.

 

The interviews for “The liberation of the village Voorthuizen”

As is well-known, the German soldiers had taken their post at the Kerkstraat, with their headquarters in the school of the Reformed Church and they defended this post fiercely. From the eye witness reports and the map it follows that at the time six of the people interviewed used to live at a very short distance from each other in the Kerkstraat and they have experienced the events from very closeby.

 

Kees Mulderij (12) told us that they had been busy taking down the mattresses and blankets from the attic, where they usually slept, to the living room. Only when they were halfway the stairs all the window panes in the house were shattered. Through the broken glass they saw that the Van de Bergschool (7) had been hit. They immediately ran down to shelter in the basement. This was at about half past seven in the evening of Monday April 16. Kees is now still very much impressed by the large risk his father had taken when on Tuesday April 17 the first Canadians in carriers had moved into the Kerkstraat. Keeping their guns ready the Canadian soldiers had moved systematically through the houses to search for hidden German soldiers. His father had been extremely early in making his call: “Guys, come on out, we are safe!” and had put his children in a row in front of the house to greet the Canadians.

 

 

The by Canadian shelling ruined house of the Broekhuizen-Mol family on the Hoofdstraat, across the Molenweg. (no. WO2.0574)

 

Nico Verbrugh (23), who used to live at the site where now the village community centre Het Trefpunt is found, thus very close to the farm Blankensgoed, shared the following: On Monday morning there was a lot going on in the village but there was no canon fire yet. During the whole day a small reconnaissance plane had circled above the village. Most of the German soldiers moved out towards Putten, but small groups remained. Nico told about a German soldier who had been shooting all through the night from Monday to Tuesday while situated besides the small basement window. This was new to all the other people present at the meeting and the story first left them puzzled because everyone was convinced that the Canadians had not come any further than Zeumeren on Monday. But the story matched with what was later to be told by Nico Wilgenburg and also with the story that had been told earlier by Mrs. Van Beek of Gelkenhorst who had said that her husband had seen “English” military on their land already on Sunday April 15. We therefore assume that the German soldier at Verbrugh’s house had been shooting to keep the SAS scouts away, who had been dropped on the Appelse Hei earlier on Friday April 13. It was on that Friday that the resistance fighter Jan van den Broek, who was about to help the Canadians who had been dropped, was killed when he failed to recall the correct password. Every May 4th also flowers are set on the grave of Jan van den Broek.

 

Henk Volkers(13) who used to live a little further down the Kerkstraat, next to the entrance to the Reformed Church (13b), recalls that most of the time on Monday afternoon and also Tuesday they had spent in the underground shelter. Henk:“We experienced it all from the shelter. We assumed the sounds from the shelling was from canon fires and the families Weimar and Van Engelen soon moved into our shelter. From them we heard that the Stomphorst family (18) had been killed and that the house of Stomphorst (18b), as well as the three connected houses of our neighbors Jan Brink (14), Dirk van Voorst (15) and Teus Weimar (16), the house and bakery of Van Engelen (17) and the master house “Irene” (19) at the Ring had been demolished by gun fires and furthermore the farm Blankersgoed of Van Galen (21b) and the school of the Reformed Church had been burned. The grenades came very close on Tuesday, since they were fired from the Canadian tanks positioned at the former ice skating rink, at the land of Henk de Gooier (22) across the cemetery”.

 

Picture showing left the three connected houses that burned and the ruined Irene on the Ring. (No. WO2-0594)

 

A hole had been shot in the tower of the Reformed Church, just below the clock hands. As if by magic the house of Volkers (13a) was left untouched from shelling and fire. Only much later the house was sold to the church and broken down. A few times Volkers went up to the attic to watch the destruction from the small top window. On Monday afternoon he noticed about 8 German soldiers sneak from behind the rectory and flee in a row through a ditch in the direction of Nijkerk.

 

Mariek van de Meij from the Schoolstraat (4) had kept good track of the time. “On Monday afternoon from 6 o’clock on, there had been a German car of the Red Cross parked next to our house. It may have been that this car was the target, even though the car was already gone when a grenade hit at only three meters from that spot. My father saw on Monday evening, just after 7:30 pm, how a grenade hit the Smidsplein (1) and he immediately ordered the family to enter the shelter. He came last and when a grenade hit the house at that moment he was hurt by a shrapnel in his hip. The clock stopped at 7:40 that night”, Mariek claims gravely. The family still remained in the basement because the shooting was fierce, but they didn’t have a roof above their heads. During the night they awaited for pauses in the shelling and moved one by one to the shelter of the neighbors Zeegers. Mariek: “Till Tuesday morning there was a German soldier holding a pantzerfaust at the corner close to the bookshop Timmer (2), who tried to stop the tanks that were approaching.” Did you know of any of the other houses that had been hit? Mariek: “Your world is very small on such occasions. The only thing you see is your own house, your own little world”.

“On Tuesday, just after 2 pm, we saw the first tanks enter the Schoolstraat and the Kerkstraat and we called “There are the Tommies!” but we weren’t allowed to say that because they were Canadian. Some of us already ran outside, but others only came out of the shelter around five o’clock. By that time most of Voorthuizen was already liberated but not yet the Kerkstraat. There was still shooting going on and one could still see German military”.

 

Nico Wilgenburg (11) who used to live further down the Kerkstraat, had prepared well for the interview and gave the following orderly eye witness report: On Sunday 15 April it was clear in Voorthuizen that the liberators were on their way. On that day many German soldiers moved to the village Voorthuizen. They claimed the Reformed School (7) as well as the house of family Leutscher (8), across the road from the Wilgenburg residence. Nico helped with securing the books and other things belonging to Leutscher, putting them in the henhouse of Mulderij. On that Sunday afternoon, Nico and some friends were looking for lapwing eggs on the grass land of Blankensgoed, near the road to Putten, when they were fired at. He assumes they were fired at by the SAS scouts of whom Nico Verbrugh related. When they realized they were being shot at, they went down in the field, wearing their proper Sunday clothing, and crawled to Blankensgoed. Nico: “At Van Galen there were many Germans with horses. These Germans asked us to come with them and show them from where we had been shot. But we didn’t want to go. So the Germans went alone on bicycles.”. On Monday afternoon the Germans prohibited everyone to go outside and at about four o’clock the first grenade fell in the garden of Mrs. Van Asch, who used to live in the former rectory of the Reformed Church. That night around 7 pm the first shelling salvos started. “We heard the shot first, then the long whistle and then the hit. Every half an hour up to three quarters of an hour, there was a salvo”. Near the house of Wilgenburg (11) the Germans were ordered to cover their wagon with bushes. Then the fire started at the farm Blankensgoed of the Van Galen family and also the farm of Witte near the Heuveltjes burned that night while other houses like those of the families Van der Meij, Wijnveen and Broekhuizen were demolished by Canadian gun fires in order to chase away the Germans.

 

The German command post in the former Reformed School on the Kerkstraat near the Ring, was shot and burned.

 

Mien van den Broek (29) 87 years old, shares that already on Tuesday morning at 7 am they had coffee with the Canadian liberators on the land of the Cooperation. Then the family was told to go back to the shelter since the Canadians were to move into Voorthuizen. “The tanks drove through the fields, in between the buildings of the former Cooperation and the former train station and then followed through the land of Gaasbeek (now the Zeehelden district) in the direction of junction The Punt. But we were only set free later that afternoon. The Germans fled over the Buurtweg (34) towards Lankeren (35) while the Canadians fired at them from the Rijksweg and Noordersingel. At the house of the family Bos on the Appelseweg the Canadians even shot the front facade of the house. After the war we often had visitors from the Canadians who were involved with the liberation”.

 

Marie and Bertha Zandbergen (34a/b) on Lankeren (35) saw the fleeing Germans on that Tuesday afternoon, who ran along the creek and then over the Lankerenseweg passing their house, in the direction of Evert and Gijs Druyf on Lankeren and from there following a dirt road to “de Akker” in the direction of Nijkerk.

At the time when the Germans were running back in the field of the house, following the creek, two resistance fighters Joost Fraanje from Barneveld and Bertus van de Woerd from “de Dempo” had just run into the kitchen of the Zandbergen family and they were happily calling to father Zandbergen, also a resistance fighter, “Hurray, we are free!”. That happened to be true for Barneveld, but not yet for Voorthuizen and Lankeren. When they saw through the kitchen window these Germans running past the creek, they were so shocked that they were unable to think of a proper hiding place. First they tried to hide in the broom closet in the kitchen, but this was too small and overstuffed. Then they panicked and within seconds folded themselves in the kitchen cupboards among the pots and pans. The two girls Marie and Bertha, who were remarkably smaller, have tried this later, but couldn’t manage to fit in the small space. Necessity knows no law but it does seem to know where to provide extra space. In the afternoon three tanks drove over the Lankerenseweg, shooting their canons in the direction of Appel and Nijkerk. Then other Canadian tanks followed, who had planned to drive from Barneveld over the junction to Nijkerk but they had met strong German formations in western Appel. Since the crew heard that Voorthuizen was now free, the tanks turned and drove through Voorthuizen and Putten to Harderwijk. With this move, besieging the Germans on the north-east Veluwe was concluded.

 

Cees Bakker (30), of the blacksmith’s shop H. Bakker on the Hoofdstraat across the road of the Posthoorn, told us that he and his brother Jan Bertus were asked by their father on Monday evening to get some milk; Cees at Willem Zandbergen on the Appelseweg and his brother at Jo Zandbergen (31) on the Noordersingel. Cees:”I had to follow the small country roads, my parents said. At Willem Zandbergen I was surprised to see the head of the resistance in Voorthuizen and surroundings, teacher Gerritsen, who had been in hiding for years, sitting on the water tank playing with a pistol. They gave me the milk and said that I had to return home in a hurry because it was getting dangerous. I heard some whistling of grenades and every now and then a loud bang, but I had no idea where the sounds came from. My brother on the Noordersingel was obviously closer to the fire and he even saw shrapnel falling in front of his feet. Our father had to run a message at that same time for the underground resistance. He was to warn some people in the Kerkstraat, I think at Kraai’s. He took a short cut over the at that time still bare grounds of the Wheem, following the so-called school lane. He was supposed to get back home at 8 o’clock. I had returned by that time and noticed on the corner Hoofdstraat-Noordersingel some young Germans of the Herman Göring Division, who had set up some light artillery there. They ordered me straight home. My brother had already returned but not yet my father. He was forced to find cover in the Ganzenbeek (32) during the firing. There had been several other people cowering. The Kerkstraat was now under fire and some people were killed, but my father made it safely home.” Then Cees explains about other battles that occurred on Tuesday close to his home: “Already early in the morning some tanks had passed over the Hoofdstraat. They had fired in the direction of the Baron van Nagellstraat. Behind the houses there were many Germans and they fired back. We later found some burns in a mattress from bullets and also our iron fence had bullet holes. Just over De Punt, in front of the garden of the physician, doctor Mettrop, there had been a Canadian tank on fire that morning which had been hit by a pantzerfaust fired from that garden. At around 2 o’clock the first tanks moved over the Noordersingel. The German soldiers fled on claimed bicycles, followed by the tanks over the Hoofdstraat in the direction of Buitenlust, so moving away from the village centre, but then a group of tanks returned and drove through the gardens at the back of the houses across the Hoofdstraat and thus returned to the village”.

 

Hennie Mulderij lived at Overhorst (36) and recalls a man named Dick Banning who was in hiding at Overhorst. Dick was on his way to find his fiancee Marie Scheeper (5) living on the Schoolstraat, when he died in the firing on the Ring, when he tried to hide close to brick oven of Bakery Van Engelen (17). Also hiding there, and also killed, were was family Stomphorst (18) with three children. The family Van Engelen, who had been hiding on the other side of the oven, was saved.

 

Frans Druijf (21) told on site of the farmland Blankensgoed (21b), that he had been a farm hand there from 1943 till 1947. At the fields of former Blankensgoed there is presently a construction site for a new housing district which will also be called Blankensgoed.

 

Estate Blankensgoed.

l.t.r.: the ladies Klaasje and Geertje and their parents Jan van Galen (sr.) and Aartje van Galen-Hoogeveen.

 

Frans tells about the horrific fire on Monday evening 16 April at that site. When the Germans and Canadians were busy firing eachother, the family Van Galen had retreated to the basement together with the maid and the family Kraai from the Kerkstraat. They were soned accompanied by an evacuee and a young boy as well as Frans. When there were three German soldiers who wanted to hide in the basement, they had to sit on the steps as the basement was overstuffed. The Germans fleeing into the house were probably noticed by Canadian scouts (maybe the SAS scouts) because they fired with machine guns at the farm. According to Frans they must have set the farm on fire with machine gun fires, because he had not heard any explosions of grenades. Frans:”One of the Germans on the stairs peeked under the basement door and shouted that he saw a lot of light. We immediately understood that the farm was on fire. Since the wall next to the door to the cow barn was hit by many bullets, we know that they must have shot us from the fields behind the house.” People living in the Kerkstraat saw the Monday night getting light and they ran over to help but they soon were driven back since the house with thatched roof And also the barn filled with pigs and 2 haystacks, also with thatched roof, were burning like a bitter hell, according to Nico Willigenburg.

Frans says that everyone hiding in the basement ran through the grass land to the shelter of Helmert Hul. Frans had tried to cut the cows loose with a kitchen knife and he wanted to hush them outside through the large barn doors. He managed to free three cows but these panicked and instead of running outside, they jump through the poles in the barn into the fire. “When I saw that I gave up on the other cows. Also the dog who was tied to the burning haystack I was unable to save because I just couldn’t get close. There were about 25 cows and one horse in the barn and none of them survived. Also the pigs died, but luckily we had taken the younger cows and calves to the field that morning. We do not know where the Germans fled. When the fire was over, we buried the cattle here on the land. It was horrible!”

 

Driekus van Beek(26) living on the Bakkersweg, across the present Ford dealer and workshop, and Jan van Galen living on the Harremaatweg (27), across the campsite Ackersate, were able to tel lus which way the tanks had moved from Zeumeren to Prinsenkamp, north of the village. This route has also become clear from the drawing C showing the routes of the tank columns and the reinforcement troops that had come from the area around Apeldoorn. Driekus saw from his basement window that about 40 tanks moved over the Koninginnelaan and across the Molenweg in the direction of the Harremaat. The basement window gave a clear view of the junction of the Bakkersweg and Koninginnelaan. “One tank stayed at the junction and the Canadians who had taken German prisoners of was would search the soldiers first and then take them to this tank.”. The family Van Beek is originally from Putten. Driekus said: “My father lost 38 relatives during the razzia’s in Putten.”

 

Drawing C, showing the route of the tanks coming from Apeldoorn

 

Jan van Galen from the Harremaatweg (27), had made on Monday 16 April, together with his father, a shelter made up of stacked turfs behind the wooden barn. Pointing at the henhouses at the back of the garden, Jan says that during the summer of 1944 a Jewish couple from Nijkerk had been hiding there. “Their name was Gelkopf, but we called them Karel and Dora”. After just half a year Jan’s father had been warned that the hiding place was known in the neighborhood and so the couple had to leave. “I can still see them walk away over the dirt road, without any luggage, no new address or someone to guide them, as far as I know, but maybe my parents just weren’t allowed to say so. They managed to find a good place at the family of Aalt van Hell on the Stroeërweg”. But Jan only heard about that after the war. “Anyhow they have survived the war and also their children who had been in hiding in Zwartebroek at Van Veen”. Behind the farm runs the creek Ganzebeek. “On Monday evening 17 April a few tanks stopped over there, probably to watch the traffic on the Rijksweg coming from Apeldoorn. Then they moved back. On Tuesday April 18 they returned, but now with many tanks and they drove while firing past Huize Zandbergen and then through the Heuveltjes north towards the Prinsenkamp. This must have been the time that a grenade coming from a German canon, without exploding, knocked the corner from our roof. We found the huge grenade later in the ditch along the road. We reported the discovery with the authorities so that it could be removed. A Mr. Job Versteeg turned up on his carrier bicycle. He put a jute bag on the luggage rack in front of the handle bars and “hop!”, he raised the grenade on the luggage rack and cycled away. Perilous!”.

 

Evert Jan Vermeer used to live in the farm on the sharp corner of the Bosweg crossing the Apeldoornsestraat (28), thus close to Huize Zandbergen. He recalls the following: “On Monday evening and later that night German soldiers coming from the Hunnenweg moved towards the Bosweg following a small path between the Apeldoornesestraat and the Ganzenbeek. They were forced into a battle with the Canadians on the spot where now the tennis lawns are found. There was machine gun fire and also canon fire. The noise was comparable to the fireworks we have to face every new year’s eve in the village. But then the Germans retreated to the Wilbrinkbos, which is known as the Heuveltjes. Later that night it was reasonably quiet but on Tuesday morning the numerous tanks that had been waiting in the fields where now is the housing district Steenkamp, attacked, as we had heard in the story of Jan van Galen. During this attack the farm of family De Wit was battered by the Canadians. The tanks moved left and right of Huize Zandbergen and started their move to Prinsenkamp. But the tanks that were faced with the steep hill covered by trees, among which the famous Twelve Apostles, had to move left of the hill and then they followed the other tanks through the lower part of the forest in the direction of Prinsenkamp. One of the Canadian tanks has been broken there by the Germans”. See picture.

 

The Canadian tank that was taken down in the Wilbrinkbos by a panzerfaust caught the interest of many people in Voorthuizen. Who still remembers them?

 

The story of the liberation of the area north of the Wilbrinkbos will be told in a coming edition of Oud Barneveld, with eye witness reports from the Prinsenkamp. The Germans had positioned their canons there, hidden from the Canadian reconnaissance planes. Some of the canons had been placed on the floors of the farm barns with the doors opened, so that the Canadians had to fire at the about twenty farms. This meant that almost all farms in the area were damaged and many of them caught fire. During this firing several of the inhabitants of Prinsenkamp have been killed.

The story about Prinsenkamp will only be published in Oud Barneveld after the memorials and festivities of the liberation, but video shootings and interviews will be available on the websites www.voorthuizenliberation1945.nl and www.oudbarneveld.nl .

Possibly also more interviews will be presented on the Liberation of the village Voorthuizen, since we still search for other 75+ people from Voorthuizen who want to relate their story. The “Ride the route of the tanks” rides during the week of festivities in May 2010 will also include a visit to Prinsenkamp in Nijkerk and partly in Putten.

 

Voorthuizen,

Gert Jan van Elten

 

 

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