If the Second World War had not been there, Henk Erven (14) from Spoordonk would still have lived. It was the eternal pain of his mother after his fatal death. Henk died through a trap in the tower of the Heuvelse Church in Tilburg. Should his parents have taken that hiding? And should they have let Henk go to Tilburg shortly after the liberation in 1944?
People who came to visit always saw Henk’s mother sitting in her hands with his prayer card. And when strangers came over, she told them his story. “It was very important for her and her family,” says Jan van Gemert. Through his sister -in -law, who had to say uncle to Henk, he heard the tragic family story and he decided to write it down.
“Henk wanted to go into the world.”
When Spoordonk and Tilburg are liberated in 1944, Henk is 14 years old. He is the eldest son in a family with eight children. A calm boy, but also eager to learn. He reads a lot. Henk is in the first year of the Seminarie, the priest training, in Boxtel. His parents have people in hiding and with one of them he becomes friends: Wim van Harssel. “Henk wanted to go into the world,” Jan explains. “So he dealt a lot with Wim, who was about six years old, in the early twenties. A city boy who was probably in the resistance, in illegality.”
Wim is almost discovered during a raid. “That was very exciting. There were several farms in the neighborhood and at the neighbors, the Frank family, they found two people in hiding. They were taken away and did not survive.” Although Henk’s father is still being questioned at the police station, their hiding is not found. “But immediately after the raid, Wim was transferred to another address. So from one day to the next, Henk’s friend was gone.”
A short time later, at the end of October 1944, his Spoordonk and Tilburg freed. Wim pops up and he invites Henk to come to Tilburg. Jan: “You can imagine that his parents didn’t like that so much. But they gave him permission to go for three days.”
On the third day, Wim proposes to climb the tower together of the Heuvelse Church. “To look at the bonfires that were then lit on the Heuvelplein. The English had released the tower. The four of them walked up one after the other. There was a booby trap: a hidden land mine, a trap of the Germans. Henk was dead in one fell swoop.”
“The war was never over for them.”
Henk’s father hears the tragic news of the pastor, in the stable of his farm. At that time, his mother just gave birth to a daughter: Wilhelmina. “The war was never over for them. But they still gave it a place in a certain way.”
In the book ‘Come, we are going up …’ Jan wrote the forgotten history of Henk. And he made a performance about it with a group of young theater students. About a war victim after the liberation. “You can’t officially call it that, say organizations for Eregraven. But I see Henk as a war victim. Because if the war had not been there, he would have lived.”
The show that Jan made about Henk Erven can be seen on Monday in Boxtel and Wednesday in Spoordonk. More information Do you find here.
