Monument Gebr. Gootjes

On the day of Remembrance Day 4 May 2021, the memorial stone "Dying vanquished" of Piet and Jaap Gootjes was unveiled by Piet Gootjes, a cousin of the Gootjes family. The memorial stone is on the grave monument of their parents.

Pieter (cover name Daan) and Jacob Pieter (cover name Koos) Gootjes were members of a KP (goons) and so involved in the armed resistance against the German occupier.
Jaap Gootjes was an unpaid employee at the town hall in Baflo, charged with issuing identity cards. This gave him the opportunity to make many false identity cards for many people in hiding. In June 1943 successful raid on the distribution office of the Frisian Langweer. They hid near Toornwerd near Middelstum (Gr).
Both were killed in a firefight with a group of 20 German soldiers in Middelstum on 11 February 1944. Their hiding place had been betrayed by a fellow villager. Their hiding place provider Klaas Bos was shot and his wife Trijntje Bos-Terpstra was arrested and taken to a concentration camp in Germany, where she later died.
Pieter (28 years old) and Jaap (23 years old) Gootjes were cremated on 19 February 1944 in Westerveld. On May 4, 1945 the ash boxes were claimed by 2 German officers and dumped by them in a canal between Haarlem and Amsterdam. The ash boxes have never been found.

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