Dohmen Nicolaas

Dohmen, Nicolaas Jozef Petrus (Nico) P.H. Dohmen, a liberal Catholic from Kampen, Overijssel, was employed as an agricultural consultant. Shortly after the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, he gathered his seven children around him and made them all promise that if the Germans occupied Holland, they would not cooperate with the new rulers. Thus, in the spring of 1943, his sons Nico and Ernest went into hiding in Limburg. Shortly afterwards, the two brothers helped bring an Allied pilot to safety, but they aroused the suspicion of the German authorities. Nico was therefore forced to remain in hiding, finding shelter with the van de Voort family in Tienray, Limburg. In the summer of 1943, Nico and his host family’s daughter, J.C.M. (Hanna) van de Voort*, set up a center for hiding Jewish children in Tienray, Limburg. In all, the Dohmens provided shelter for 123 Jews. Also, whenever necessary, they provided those in their care with ration cards, clothing, and footwear. During this period, Nico’s job was to maintain contact with all the children at their different locations. Not a day passed without Nico’s having to solve problems created by the situation of insecurity these children were in. On the night of July 30, 1944, the authorities were looking for Nico, but he managed to disappear into a hideout and was not found. Immediately after the liberation of Tienray on November 21, 1944, Nico traveled to the Jewish Coordination Committee in Eindhoven. One of the JCC’s goals was to take care of Jewish children coming out of hiding. The JCC official demanded a list of all the addresses in Tienray and the vicinity where Jewish children were staying in order to relocate them from what they felt was a frontline area. Nico refused to cooperate. He contended that the front was equally unsafe for Jewish and non-Jewish children and that it was unnecessary to move the children he had helped to hide. Nico insisted that he would only comply if all the children in the district were relocated to a safer area. In the end, the Jewish children remained in Tienray and waited for the rest of the country to be liberated. After the war Nico kept in touch with the children he helped. On March 29, 1984, Yad Vashem recognized Nico Dohmen as Righteous Among the Nations.