1

The fallen resistance people in Limburg

 

Koos Postuma
(Jacobus)

∗ 11-05-1921 Brunssum     † 22-03-1945 Nijverdal/Hellendoorn (23)
- Aid to Jews - NV - People in hiding - Brunssum -

Koos Postuma used to live in Treebeek and worked as a radio mechanic at the State Mines (Staatsmijnen). In his spare time he looked for diving addresses for Jewish children and made home visits to foster parents in his hometown. [1]
After a call for forced labor in Germany he went into hiding with his mother in Brunssum. [2]
He was now able to devote himself entirely to helping Jewish children who had been taken to South Limburg to go into hiding. For this purpose, he was involved in the NV network.
When the southern part of the Netherlands was liberated, Koos was stuck in the north, which had not yet been liberated. So he no longer took the Jewish children to South Limburg, but to Nijverdal. [1]
He was killed in a bombing attack in March 1945, when he accompanied a group of Jewish children to their new hiding addresses in Nijverdal. Despite this relocation of a hundred children and all the other dangers, all the children rescued by the NV lived to see the liberation. More than 140 were still present in Limburg. Of these, 48 then stayed in Brunssum and its surroundings, 44 in Heerlen, 33 in and around Geleen and 17 in Venlo. [3]
He is buried in the municipal cemetery in Hellendoorn near Nijverdal, grave Ma 636. [4]
Jacobus ( Koos ) Postuma is listed in the Erelijst 1940-1945 (Honor Roll of the Dutch Parliament). [5]

Footnotes

1. De NV en de Joodse kinderen, 1942-1945: korte geschiedenis van een Nederlandse onderduikorganisatie
2. Dr. F. Cammaert, Het Verborgen Front. 5. Hulpverlening aan joden pp.416-419
3. Herman van Rens De vervolging van joden en Sinti tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog in de Nederlandse provincie Limburg, p.211
4. Gem. Begraafplaats, Hellendoorn Ninaberlaan 34, 7447-AD, Hellendoorn
5. Erelijst 1940-1945
6. Oorlogsgravenstichting.nl