Vos Aart & Johanna (Kuyper)

Vos, Aart & Johanna Hendrika (Kuyper) Aart and Johanna (Johtje) Vos got involved in the Resistance in 1941 and continued to be active members for the duration of the war. Among other things, Aart arranged false identity cards and ration coupons for people in hiding. When the musicians Nap and Alice de Klijn-Heksch were scheduled to move from their home in Laren to the Jewish quarter in Amsterdam, Aart obtained false papers for their grand piano. Subsequently, he was able to store the piano and a suitcase full of valuables until the end of the war. When the Jewish couple was actually summoned, Aart volunteered to take their three-year-old son into hiding too. Thus Marc de Klijn became their first Jewish ward. Before long, others followed. At one point there were 36 people hiding with the Vos family. When Johtje’s mother visited and realized what was going on, she admonished her daughter for endangering her life and the life of her children. Johtje explained to her mother that she and Aart considered it more important for their children to have parents who act according to the dictates of their conscience, even if it cost them their lives, than parents who thought of their own safety first. Over the course of the war, Aart and Johtje temporarily hid about 40 people, most of them Jews, in their home. Of these people, at least eight remained sheltered in the Voses’ home for longer than two or three years. Aart dug an underground tunnel that led from his two-story house to a nature reserve about 100 yards away. The entrance to the tunnel was hidden beneath the false bottom of a chute that was covered with coal. When there were house searches, which occurred more than once, Johtje distracted the Germans while the fugitives disappeared down the passage. In hiding people, Aart was responsible for maintaining contact with the underground and obtaining food while Johtje was in charge of running the household. She did all she could to cheer up and entertain her guests. Sheorganized candlelight parties to which the fugitives attended dressed up in clothes borrowed from one another. She also led children in games. One little girl who spent three years with the Vos family had to be frequently hospitalized. Aart and Johtje took excellent care of her and when they discovered that her parents had perished in a death camp they did all they could to adopt her. However, she was put in a Jewish orphanage. After the war, the Vos family moved to Woodstock, New York, where they adopted a child and founded a home for children. In 1976, the Stichting 1940--1945 granted Aart and Johtje a special pension in gratitude for their wartime Resistance activities. On December 23, 1982, Yad Vashem recognized Aart Vos and his wife, Johanna Hendrika Vos-Kuyper, as Righteous Among the Nations.