Klaas


Here you see a drawing, though a bit blurry, made by Klaas. A castle. One he might even could have really built, had he lived long enough.
A self-made man he was, with talents. At the age of 19 he acted as a teacher at the same technical school he had done his final examinations a few years before. Through correspondance courses  he learned to be an architect. Left his hometown and went to live in The Hague, where he met his wife Dora and later moved to Utrecht.

It was a good marriage, they had three children, two boys and a girl.

Being an architect, he was also asked by his parents to make the plans for a house for them, next to the hotel in Emmen, De Kolhoop. There's more about this house on this webite, as it was important in the familiyhistory.
He and his family had a rough time during the global depression following the Wall Street crash of '29, but overcame all this in the course of the 30's. Klaas worked as an engineer/designer for the Dutch railroad company, the NS(Nederlandse Spoorwegen), in Utrecht.
They lived in a nice house in the Josef Haydnlaan, till the Germans came. The planes with bombs heading for Rotterdam(14th may 1940) flew over their house.
Soon after that their home was seized by the nazi-occupator and they had to move out.

This is where they went, Franz Schubertstraat 37 in Utrecht. Straight opposite to a school also confiscated by nazi-troops as their quarters.
Klaas and his wife Dora were  furious at the occupiers and decided to do something. They took great risks. With a whole mob of German soldiers right across the road, they hid Jewish people as well as guns on the top floor of the building.
In 1941 he founded a resistance group called the "Oranjevrijbuiters", helping people - mainly Jews -to get to save places on the Veluwe and to the North of the Netherlands. Also they did assaults on distributionoffices for foodcoupons and on collaborators.




In retrospect, its easy to judge and say maybe they were to reckless, but: They did do something against this beastly regime.

In 1943 one of the members betrayed the whole group and  they were all arrested. After being emprisoned in the Oranjehotel in Scheveningen they were sentenced to death and executed in the early morning of  february 29th 1944 in the dunes near The Hague. 2 of the 20 members were spared, one because he had the same birthday of one the biggest crooks of all time, Adolf Hitler. Still they had to watch there comrades being shot and their bodies being dumped in a hole in the dunes.

Klaas was a hero, definititely. Of all the members of my family, my biggest sympathy goes out to him. There is a whole website dedicated to him and his resistancegroup:
Oranjevrijbuiters. It's in Dutch.

After the war their remains were exhumed and interred in an honorary grave.At the cementary "De Tolsteeg", in Klaas' hometown Utrecht, a monument was erected.

On dit monument valt een this memorial one can read a passage of a poem by the Dutch poet Adriaan Roland Holst:

Dutch: Ik zal de halmen niet meer zien noch binden ooit de volle schoven maar doe mij in den oogst geloven waarvoor ik dien 10 mei 1947*

in English: I'll see the blades of grass no more nor will I ever bind the full sheaves but make me believe in the harvest to which I serve may 10th 1947*

* Date of the unveiling of the monument

His wife Dora never got over the loss of her husband. She broke off all contact to all members of the Postma-family, even to Hennie, who had no links to nazism or Germany whatsoever, having been in a Japcamp in the Dutch Indies himself. She became 92 years old.
A street was named after my uncle Klaas, the Postmalaan in Utrecht.
As I found out, their kids knew so little about the family from fathers side, one son didn't even know his grandparents had a hotel, while he himself worked in the restaurant-business for the greatest part of his life.
At the same time, up to 1,5 years ago I myself was unfamiliar with the fact that a monument existed in honour of my uncle in Utrecht, nor - I guess - did my father know this about his own brother.


That was Klaas, the man who made the right choice in bad times, and paying for this with the highest possible price for any human, your life.
     
              



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