Johtje and Aart Vos.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
JOHTJE AND AART Vos didn’t sit down one day and decide to begin rescuing Jews from the Nazis in their Dutch village of Laren. Their rescue work began with a piano, a child, and a suitcase.
When their good friends, professional musicians Nap and Alice de Klijn, were ordered to move into the Jewish quarter in Amsterdam, the de Klijns signed over ownership of one of their pianos to Johtje to protect it from the Germans. The de Klijn’s also had a child who was hiding with another family, and when that hiding place suddenly became unsafe, Johtje and Aart took the child into their home, no questions asked. And when another good friend received word that he was also being forced to move to the Jewish section of Amsterdam, he asked the Voses if they would hide a suitcase of valuables for him. They agreed.
Before long the Voses had joined a Resistance organization composed of other like-minded people in the Laren area. The members of the Laren Resistance called themselves the Group. The Voses agreed to work for the Group by using their home as a hiding place for anyone on the run from the Nazis.
The Voses’ house was at the end of a dead-end street, just a few kilometers outside of Laren. Beyond that was an acre of woods where it would be easy for people to hide if they had the time to get there. A local police officer, also part of the Laren Resistance, would warn the Voses by telephone before the suspicious Gestapo conducted a raid on their house, but there often wasn’t time to get the fugitives out of the house and safely into the woods. So Aart built a tunnel, approximately 55 yards in length, which led from a studio in the back of the house to the woods, so that anyone trying to travel between the two would not be seen.
The Laren Resistance Group was well organized, and when people would come to the Voses requesting a hiding place, they always came with proof—names and papers—that showed they had been first screened by the Group and were truly people in need and not informers on the Germans’ payroll.
One day a Jewish man came to the Voses’ door and begged Johtje to hide him. He said he knew Johtje was hiding Jews in her home and he desperately needed a place to stay because he was going to be arrested that night.
Johtje wanted very much to help him, but it was too dangerous. He had no identifying names or papers from the Group. Johtje repeatedly denied having a hiding place for Jews in her home while the man kept insisting that she hide him, telling her that he understood why she was “playing innocent.”
After one-half hour of conversation with the man, Johtje finally closed her door with a heavy heart. She was haunted by this incident for days afterward. What had happened to him? Had he been arrested? Shot? Sent to a concentration camp? If so, it was all her fault for not taking him in.
One night about a week later, Johtje asked Aart if he would go out with her to get a cup of coffee at a nearby restaurant. After they had been seated, Johtje looked up in shock. There, a few tables away, was the same Jewish man who had come to her door only a week before. He wasn’t in a concentration camp, and he wasn’t dead. Instead, he was socializing calmly with a group of German officers. He was an informer! If Johtje had agreed to hide him, she and Aart and their children would be dead, and the Jews they were hiding would be on their way to concentration camps. Johtje and Aart quickly left the restaurant.
But the Gestapo didn’t give up on the Voses. They would often come to their home and question Johtje, hoping to tire her into making an incriminating mistake that would prove that she and Aart were part of the Resistance. Johtje would become exhausted during these sessions, but she didn’t slip.
One day the Gestapo officers stationed in Laren finally got the break they were looking for. With the help of a Dutch collaborator, they arrested a man named Jan who was part of the Laren Resistance. Unfortunately, it had been Jan’s turn to hide a package of dangerous items that the Group referred to as “the arsenal.” The package included the names of all the Jews who were hidden in the Laren area, where they were hidden, and several stolen rubber forgery stamps—one with the signature of Reich Commissioner Seyss-Inquart, the Nazi official in charge of occupied Holland, and the other with the German eagle—both used for creating false ID papers for those on the run from the Gestapo. The package was never kept in one place for long but was constantly moved from house to house.
The night before Jan was arrested, he had left this package at his mother-in-law’s house. When Aart received the news of Jan’s arrest, he knew that Jan’s relatives would be searched and questioned first, so Aart raced over to the mother-in-law’s house and offered to hide the package.
A short time later, Johtje looked outside into the garden and saw Aart and one of the Jewish men living with them digging a hole in the garden. She went outside and asked them what they were doing.
Aart wasn’t planning to tell her about the package, since it would be safer for her if she didn’t know.
“I’m burying a dead rabbit,” he answered.
The package was wrapped in special paper, so Johtje was suspicious. “That’s quite an honorable funeral for a dead rabbit,” she said. Aart finally told her what it was.
A few hours later, Aart, Johtje, and their hiders were sitting around a table discussing the pros and cons of moving everyone to alternate hiding places, at least temporarily. Jan might have broken under interrogation, and the Gestapo now might finally have proof that the Voses were hiding Jews. Lying on the table in front of them were the real identification cards of everyone currently living there.
Suddenly a black Gestapo car pulled up in front of the house. Aart and the hiders ran for the tunnel. The ID cards were still on the table. What was Johtje to do? Their nine-year-old son Peter had just come running down the stairs when he heard the commotion. Johtje stuffed the cards into his sweater and then told him to walk away quietly. Peter clearly understood what was going on, so he took a ball outside and began to bounce it up and down. When he passed the officers, he played his part well, greeting them politely as he walked farther and farther away.
Johtje was horrified that she had put her son in such danger, but as the men walked in, she watched Peter out of the corner of her eye until she knew that he was safe. Now she had other things to worry about. Standing in her house were a German SS officer, a Dutch NSB officer, and Jan, his face bruised and swollen. He begged Johtje to tell the men the location of the rubber stamps. If she handed them over, they would spare his life.
Johtje didn’t know what to do. Should she save her Resistance friend and tell the truth? Or should she deny any knowledge of the stamps, thereby saving everyone in the Laren Group, both hiders and resisters? She told them she didn’t know what Jan was talking about.
When the SS officer said that he had some business to attend to in the nearby town of Baarn, Johtje, the NSB officer, and Jan were left alone. The Dutch officer tried to convince Johtje he was on their side. “If you only trust me,” he said, stretching out his hand to Johtje, “if you tell me where the stamps are, I can help Jan. I can get him his freedom, believe me.” When that didn’t work, the officer warned her that if she didn’t cooperate by the time the SS officer returned, she would surely be interrogated and sent to a concentration camp. Johtje was trembling with fear, but she continued to play dumb.
Just then, the telephone rang. It was Aart, seeing if Johtje was safe. In a puzzled voice, in front of the NSB officer, Johtje told Aart that the officers and Jan had all been asking about some forgery stamps. Did he know anything about these stamps? Aart wasn’t sure what to do. He claimed ignorance but then suggested that perhaps Jan’s brother Dick knew something about them. Aart was sure Dick would be hiding somewhere safe at this point and thought it best to keep the Germans running from place to place instead of staying focused on Johtje.
Jan’s wife, Mieke, suddenly rushed into the house, heedless of the danger, wanting to see her husband. Johtje quickly asked her if she knew where Dick was and if she could find him and get the stamps the Germans were looking for. Mieke said she knew where he was and turned to go. Then, as she walked Mieke to the door, Johtje suddenly got a flash of inspiration, a brilliant idea. She whispered to Mieke to meet her outside in a few minutes.
Johtje came back into the house and told the NSB officer that perhaps she could find her husband and that he might be able to help them find the stamps. He let her go, knowing that her two little girls were sleeping upstairs and that she would surely come back for them.
Aart, Johtje, their children, and some of the people they rescued during the war. Back row, left to right: Ilona Schroeder, Aart Vos, Johtje Vos, Peter Vos, Koert Delmonte. Front row, left to right: Teto Schroeder, Barbara Vos, Hetty Vos, Moana Hilfman. The photograph was taken during the time of the liberation, and Aart is pointing at some Allied planes.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Johtje met Mieke, then they both crawled past the window to the garden. With their hands, they dug up the package containing the forgery stamps. Then Johtje told Mieke to come back on her bicycle in 20 minutes, pretending to have retrieved the stamps from Dick. Meanwhile, Johtje ate the dirt off her hands, wiped them clean on her underwear, and came back into the house, saying that she hadn’t been able to find her husband after all. Mieke came in 20 minutes later, panting as if she had just made a strenuous trip, and tossed the stamps onto the table. A short while later, the German officer returned. He was apparently satisfied and didn’t go after Dick. Jan’s life was spared, and those hiding in Laren remained safe.
One night over the radio the Voses heard their prime minster speaking from London. With a tearful voice he said the words they had been longing to hear: “Patriots, you are free!” The war was over!
Johtje and Aart had saved the lives of 36 people—including 32 Jews—during the course of the occupation. They were both honored by Yad Vashem with its Righteous Among the Nations award.
In 1951, Johtje and her family moved to the United States, where she and Aart ran an international children’s camp in Woodstock, New York. They were often asked to speak to various groups about their Resistance activities, and in 1999, Johtje wrote a book about their experiences called The End of the Tunnel. Aart died in 1990 and Johtje in 2007.
LEARN MORE The End of the Tunnel by Johtje Vos (Book Masters, Inc., 1999). Available by writing to the following e-mail address: bandb@hvc.rr.com.
“Johtje Vos, Rescuer: Choices of Courage”
Living Histories: Seven Voices from the Holocaust
USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education
A 30-minute video interview of Johtje conducted in 1996 by Naomi Rappaport.
http://college.usc.edu/vhi/education/livinghistories/lesson.php?nid=717.
Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust by Gay Block and Malka Drucker (Holmes & Meier, 1992) includes a chapter interview of Johtje and Aart Vos.