(Driebergen, 1920)

Member of the 1st Company DNB

“He told without beating around the bush that he could snap someone’s neck”

Hendrik Adrianus Vos was born on 9 March 1920 in Driebergen, as the son of Herman and Teuntje Vos-de Wit. He chose the same profession as his father at a young age and became a gas fitter. During the Second World War, he went into hiding because he did not want to work in the German war industry. He came to live with the family Abraham te Voortwis on farm Klein Veenhuis at the Kriegerdijk on the Haart in Aalten.

Activities in the Resistance

In the last year of the war he was a member of Jan Ket’s assault group, together with, among others, Henk ten Have and a policeman from Rotterdam (a person in hiding at Te Winkel on the Slaadijk with the pseudonym ‘Cor te Winkel’). Henk Vos sometimes visited the people in hiding of the Obbink family on the Nieuw Slaa farm. The two eldest daughters liked him, but also someone they couldn’t gauge properly. “He told without beating around the bush that he could snap someone’s neck. If he were to end up in prison, it wouldn’t be long before they would come to rescue him.” That indeed happened a short time later.

The Arrest and the Escape

On Friday, 6 December 1944, there was a raid at the Te Voortwis family. Under the leadership of the commander of the Landwacht (NSB) Van der Glas, everything was turned upside down, especially in the attic. They had received a tip that Te Voortwis was hiding a Jewish man. They did not find him (he was at Obbink’s that day by chance), but they did catch Henk Vos, and they saw that his papers were not in order. He was taken away by three Landwacht members. He could just manage to say to Dine Obbink and her friend Willemien te Voortwis: “See you Sunday, half past nine”. That day, Vos ended up in the prison de Kruisberg in Doetinchem. He was to be transferred elsewhere on Sunday.

On Saturday evening, a truck from Aalten drove back and forth in front of the Kruisberg. Henk Vos had to fetch dinner with two others, guarded by two German soldiers. Vos gave the soldiers a punch, causing them to lose consciousness. Vos ran to the cargo bed of the truck and rode from Doetinchem to Zelhem, where he hid in a haystack. At half past four in the morning, he walked to Aalten. At ten to ten, he was in the Heurne at Obbink’s, where the church service was being held on the farm that day.

Service with the DNB and Post-War Life

Mid-April 1945, Henk Vos became a member of the Dutch National Battalion (DNB), 1st Company. After the liberation, Henk Vos worked as a gas fitter in Driebergen. He would occasionally visit Aalten. He married Jo Tijsma on 30 October 1947 in Zeist. They had two daughters and lived in Renkum. On the wall hung certificates from Eisenhower, Churchill, and Queen Wilhelmina as thanks for his help to pilots. Henk Vos died in the mid-nineties.

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