Jan and Bets Heurkens from Geldrop are posthumously awarded the Yad Vashem by Israel. They deserve this high Jewish award for their helping hand to Jewish children in World War II. Jan was executed in 1944 in Camp Vught because of his resistance work.
It was on May 22, 1944 that love played a fatal role in the marriage of Jan and Bets Heurkens. Jan went into hiding after a raid on the population register of Mierlo (11 February 1944) and the distribution office of Geldrop (17 April 1944). The Germans counted him as one of the resistance leaders. He was being hunted. “Uncle Jan thought that the attention had died down. He wanted to surprise Aunt Bets on her birthday. He was arrested at the front door,” says Jan Bruijsten. The couple’s cousin has recorded the family history in a book.
Execution site Vught
Bruijsten’s detective work and his conversations with survivors revealed that the German SD has been posting for a week in Hof van Holland, the hotel opposite the house of Jan and Bets. The Germans were convinced that with Jan they had caught a big fish within the resistance. He was transferred to Haerendaal, the major seminary of the diocese of Den Bosch, and in June to the Vught concentration camp. On 9 August of that year he was executed as a resistance fighter at the Fusilladeplaats Lunetten in Vught. His name is mentioned on the National Monument on the Fusilladeplaats.
Family Ornstein
It is not so much for the resistance work that Jan Heurkens and his wife Bets van Grootel are now honored with a Yad Vashem award. This gratitude stems from the fact that a Luuk van der Steen suddenly lived with the childless couple during the war. A Jewish child who actually bore the name Lodewijk Ornstein, son of an Amsterdam professor. Luuk’s brother lived under the pseudonym Thijs van de Broek with Jan’s parents in Nederasselt. They survived the Holocaust thanks to the brave efforts of the families.
Contact never diluted
Leonard Ornstein, son of Luuk, has, like other descendants, never let the contact diminish. “Leonard nominated Uncle Jan and Tante Bets,” says Jan Bruijsten. He heard the news of the award this week, briefed the other cousins, and now waits to see what’s to come. “The Yad Vashem will be presented at the Israeli embassy in The Hague. It can take several months,” expects Bruijsten.
Street name
Jan Heurkens, born in Nederasselt July 16, 1907 and died May 22, 1944, grew up in Nederasselt. He was the eldest of thirteen children. After his training as a civil servant, he ended up at the town hall of Geldrop. His name lives on in his birthplace as well as in Geldrop, where a path and a street are named after the resistance hero respectively.
Bets van Grootel, born in Stratum on May 22, 1907, managed to escape the horrors of the war. She moved to Velsen where she became director of the children’s home Het Vinkennest. She had not forgotten her Brabant roots. She returned to Bergeijk where she passed away on 21 Feb 1983.