Starkenburg Teunis & Janke (Vlaskamp)

Starkenburg Teunis Starkenburg-Vlaskamp, Janke The Jewish Franken family, Victor (b. 1901), his wife Helene née Wolff (b. 1903), son Karel (b. 1930) and daughter Ineke (b. 1934), lived in the eastern town of Haaksbergen (prov. Overijssel). When the ever-increasing anti-Jewish measures resulted in orders to report for ‘work in the East” in the summer of 1942, the Frankens decided to look for hiding addresses instead. They found a place in their own town for all four of them together. However, when the father in this family got a supervisory position in the area in September 1943 that would make the Jews’ presence too dangerous, the Frankens had to move. With no idea where to turn, Helene Franken went to a neighbor, whom she had spotted a number of times from her window in the attic. She mentioned that she was Jewish, desperately looking for a place to hide for her family of four. The neighbor, never having seen a Jew, consulted with her husband, and the next day the Frankens moved without telling their earlier hosts where they were going. The neighboring family turned out to be Teunis and Janke Starkenburg, farmers who were originally from Friesland. They were in their mid-twenties and had a baby son. The presence of the Frankens was a heavy responsibility for the Starkenburgs, yet excellent relations between the two families developed. The Frankens never went outside and kept busy by helping out around the house. No one knew about their presence there. In December 1944, the Starkenburgs were ordered to vacate their home, as German officers were to be billeted there. They were allocated a smaller farmhouse on the road where the Frankens had lived before the war and where in the meantime collaborators had moved in! The Franken family had to hide in the hay loft, never to be seen since the danger of being recognized was extremely high. The Frankens subsequently moved to the hiding place where relatives had found refuge, and stayed there until theliberation of the area in April 1945. Also after the war, contact between the families continued. On December 26, 2010, Yad Vashem recognized Teunis Starkenburg and Janke Starkenburg-Vlaskamp as Righteous Among the Nations.