(Aalten, 1916)

Member of the 3rd Company DNB

After the April 1944 raid, chief distributor of Trouw in the Achterhoek

Hendrik Johan Smits was born on 11 April 1916 on the tenant farm ‘Klomps’ in the hamlet of Barlo, Aalten. His father, Hendrik J. Smits, originally comes from Germany, and his mother, Willemina Duenk, is a farmer’s daughter from Barlo. In 1918, his father bought a plot of heathland on the Zwilbroekse Grindweg for 715 guilders and cycled regularly from Aalten to Eibergen for years to clear the heath with his mattock and realise his dream. After applying for a building permit in 1924, the family of five children moved to the Holterhoek. At that time, this was a remote area near the German border, with paths, small plots, and scrubland.

At the start of the war, Johan lived at home on the Zwilbroekseweg. Together with his brother-in-law Dirk Somsen (an electrician with a shop in Eibergen), he went into the resistance. He worked as a typesetter at the Heinen printing press in Eibergen, also a resistance family, where anti-German pamphlets were printed from 1940 onwards. In the spring of 1943, Johan was asked by resistance fighter ‘Kees Brabant’ whether the Heinen printing press would print the newspaper Trouw clandestinely. After consultation, Heinen Senior and Junior agreed. The first issue of Trouw was printed at Heinen in October 1943, and the second on 23 February 1944. Notably, this is the same day as the raid on the distribution office in Borculo, in which Johan Smits was involved.

During the raid on 20 April 1944, Henk Heinen junior was arrested, and Johan Smits had to go into hiding. He went to Te Raa on Hemsink in Rekken and remained in contact with Jan Penning, chief distributor of Trouw, and his fiancée Mies Bruijnen (courier for Trouw in the IJssel region). Henk Heinen junior was executed on 6 June 1944. The Heinen printing press was closed in July on orders from the German occupier. Jan Penning was arrested in June 1944 and executed two months later in Camp Vught. Mies Bruijnen then went into hiding with Johan Smits’ parents. Now, Johan Smits became the chief distributor of Trouw in the South-East Achterhoek together with Mies Bruijnen. The final issues of Trouw were printed at Postel in Lochem and Demkes in Winterswijk (the latter during the Hunger Winter). Distribution was done by bicycle, and they were on the move frequently.

In the autumn of 1944, Johan Smits became a member of the Binnenlandse Strijdkrachten (Internal Forces), combat section, group Eibergen. Immediately after the liberation at the end of March 1945, he practised with weapons together with others in the forest next to Hemsink. Mid-April, he joined the Dutch National Battalion (DNB), the third company. Corporal in this company is his resistance comrade Willem te Raa from Hemsink.

Mies Bruijnen became a member of the DNB staff. For three months, Johan Smits helped in the liberation of villages on the Veluwe and in the Betuwe. In July 1945, he returned to Eibergen, where he worked as a typesetter at the Heinen printing press until his retirement.

On 24 February 1949, Johan Smits married Dirkje Hoopman from Aalten in Eibergen. They had six children. He met her through his brother-in-law Dirk Somsen, who came to live with his uncle and aunt Hoopman-Somsen at a young age and thus learned the trade.

Johan Smits rarely spoke about the war later in life. He died on 18 September 1998 in Eibergen.

Johan Smits