“Your father was shot. It’s unbelievable. but still true,” reads Tonny Gadellaa-Habraken from a letter from her grandmother. A very sad letter, written in May 1945, in which ‘grandmother’ tells the family that her husband, Harry Habraken from Haarlem, has been shot. Tonny was born in 1946, so she never got to know her grandfather. She commemorates him annually and feels herself getting closer to her grandfather.
Tonny thinks it is very important that she can talk about ‘grandpa Harry’ every year on May 4th. How a very normal, religious man loses his freedom from one moment to the next, is taken by the Germans, taken to Sint Pancras and shot there in cold blood.
This year, his granddaughter Tonny again hangs a large portrait of her grandfather on her balcony and reads her grandmother’s letter to dozens of interested people in the Rosenstock Huessy House in Haarlem. Harry Habraken was for many years director of printing company Sint-Jacobs Godshuis, where the Rosenstock Huessy House is now located.
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“My grandfather was really ‘a good wimp’. He had his church, the music society, his family and that was it. He was very happy here,” says Tonny. “It was really not a tough man who would join the resistance for a while.”
Director of Haarlem printing company
Harry Habraken grew up in Den Bosch and moved to Haarlem with his wife and children when the Catholic printing house Sint-Jacobs Godshuis on Antoniestraat was looking for a director. Habraken had studied graphic design and seized his chance.
Next to the printing house was an orphanage of the same name. The orphan boys were put to work in the printing house. Habraken, together with his wife Jeanne de Rooij, went to live next to the printing company and also had an office there.
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Then the Germans invade the Netherlands in 1940. Habraken does not join the resistance during the first years of the war. He occasionally does a job in the printing house for friendly resistance fighters, but that’s about it.
Job for the resistance
At the end of 1944, Antwerp and Brussels are liberated and the Allies seem to be steaming north, including Haarlem. There, the resistance fears that the inhabitants will play before their own judge and they are already trying to calm things down a bit.
A befriended detective, who is a member of the resistance, asks Habraken to print posters, so that it will not become a ‘good day for NSB members’ in the city. Habraken, as good and faithful as he is, cooperates in this. He temporarily hides the items in the attic of the orphanage’s bakery. That will eventually cost him his life.
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Habraken is suddenly arrested at home
In the night of 5 to 6 December ‘the Sinterklaas raid’ will take place in Haarlem. Hundreds of men are arrested, transported to Germany and put to work there. Many Haarlemmers try to flee the raid and look for hiding places. For example, more than 40 people take shelter in the attic of the orphanage, in the vicinity of the then still ‘secret’ Habraken posters.
Why the Germans are suddenly targeting Harry Habraken is still unclear. One of the possibilities is that a Haarlem former resistance fighter has betrayed his fellow citizens. They are then rounded up one by one by the Germans, just like Habraken. ‘Grandma Jeanne’ writes the following about this in her letter, as Tonny reads:
‘On March 18, Sunday morning at a quarter to seven, a window of the office was suddenly broken by 5 Germans who entered the office like this and broke a window in the kitchen through the corridor across the place and suddenly there were 5 germans in the room.’
(…)’1 Kraut remained in the room with his gun, 1 Kraut stood in front of the outside door and 1 Kraut stood on the place. 2 other Krauts then went to the office and printing house to investigate everything.’
Habraken is taken to a prison on the Weteringschans in Amsterdam. His house and office are ransacked by the Germans and they eventually find the posters. But fortunately they do not manage to discover the people in hiding.
Executions in retaliation for attack on train
In mid-April 1945, near Alkmaar, near Sint Pancras, an explosive is detonated near the railway. A train, which is driving towards Den Helder on behalf of the Germans, is badly damaged. What everyone fears becomes reality: the Germans are retaliating.
From the Weteringschans, Habraken and more than twenty other men are transported to Sint Pancras on a flat cart. There are no highways yet, so the caravan takes a long time to get to the north on bumpy roads. Some prisoners are shot on the way. It is Habraken’s turn on a sports field in Sint Pancras.
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The Haarlemmer turns 62 years old. His remains are later dumped in the dunes near Overveen. Eventually he is given a resting place at the Eerebegraafplaats in Bloemendaal. “Grandpa and grandma were very Catholic and they got a lot of strength from faith. I’m glad about that, because grandma was left alone with a large family,” explains Tonny.
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Research by family
Tonny’s father, Wim, never spoke about the war until he suddenly showed Tonny his mother’s letter. “My uncle then typed out the handwritten letter in its entirety and many family members continued to investigate.” Also Haarlemmer Frank Habraken, Tonny’s cousin. He also speaks at the Rosenstock Huessy House.
Tonny thinks it’s terrible that her good, loyal grandfather died in the very last weeks of the war. Grandma was of course also very sad, as she writes in her letter of May 1945:
‘Father who was always so afraid of everything, killed by the Germans, unbelievable and that now that we have had 5 years of war something like this has to happen in the last month. It can’t be any worse.
(…) We must resign ourselves to it and leave everything to Our Lord, but I cannot forget it. What a great sacrifice is demanded of us at the end of the war.
If only it had been peace a month earlier. You can’t believe how much compassion and interest we’ve had.’
On May 4, Tonny always goes to the Eerebegraafplaats in Bloemendaal. There she commemorates her grandfather Harry. “Our family always does that. During the two minutes of silence you only hear the birds chirping. Then I think: ‘birds can go where they want, they have complete freedom. They can fly across borders’. Was that is the case for everyone, but unfortunately that is not the case. Freedom is not self-evident, one must realize that. Misery will continue to exist everywhere.”
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Actually, Tonny and Frank had wanted to read the letter from grandma in their grandparents’ old house, as part of the ‘Houses of Resistance’ route in Haarlem. But due to overwhelming interest, they have to move to the somewhat more spacious chapel of the Rosenstock Huessy House. A chapel where their religious grandfather also often came to regain his strength.
New resident in the Habraken house
Boris Vissers also listens to Tonny’s story in the chapel. In June he will live in the old house of grandpa and grandma Habraken. It is still being renovated. “Very intense to hear everyone. About an ordinary man, who just did his job. You know that things like that have happened. That you can live in such a place with such a history is also very nice. I’ll think about it from time to time once I live there.”
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There is nothing to remember about her grandfather Harry on Antoniestraat, but that will change, according to Tonny. “A stained glass window on which he is depicted will be replaced, the courtyard will be named after him and a memorial stone will be placed in the facade of the building. Then grandpa will be back a bit at the place where he left it. happiest.” Then it all becomes too much for her and the tears come.