Kooreman Marinus & Catharina (Jansen); Daughter: Marianne ; Foster-Daughter: Vink Sigrid (Schwarz)

Kooreman, Marinus & Catharina Aukje (Jansen) & Marianne Vink, Sigrid (Schwarz) One evening in the spring of 1943, an underground worker took two-year-old Chaskel Katz to the home of Marinus and Catharina Kooreman in The Hague, South Holland. Marinus and Catharina simply felt that it was their duty to save a life. Marinus and Catharina, who already had a 14-year-old daughter named Marianne and an 11-year-old foster daughter named Sigrid Schwarz (later Vink), gave their fugitive infant the name Jaap and he soon became a beloved member of the family. The Kooremans’ orphaned niece, Riet (Maria Anna) Kooreman, a few years older than Marianne, had been living with the family since 1940; a grandmother and a live-in maid also shared the house. The Kooreman children were told that Jaap was the son of a cousin in Limburg and that his parents were ill. Marinus was especially concerned about bringing up Jaap in a Jewish way---he read to him from the Old Testament and sang him prayers to melodies by Mendelssohn. At the end of 1942, before Jaap’s arrival, the Kooreman family had already sheltered a Jewish woman, Catharina’s best friend, Louisa Spetter. Shortly after leaving the care of the Kooremans, Louisa was betrayed and deported to Sobibor, where she was murdered on June 11, 1943. During the war, there was always a great deal of underground activity going on in the Kooreman house, led by Jan Elkhuizen, who would often hide food coupons in the house and sometimes weapons too. In early 1943, Jan was called up for forced labor but managed to jump off the train transporting him. He suffered a severe concussion but eventually found his way back to the Kooremans, where he rested until he recuperated. In August 1943, the Kooreman family rented a vacation cottage in the woods in Bennekom, Gelderland. When the Germans arrived there after the arrest of an underground activist in possession of directions to the retreat, Sigrid happened to be out taking a walk with Jaap. However,Catharina was taken away for questioning. Marinus was also arrested, but both were freed the following day. In the meantime, the grandmother took Jaap to hide in a hospital in Ede, Gelderland, where a friend of Catharina’s was the director. Jaap was later returned to the Kooreman family and again he only narrowly escaped detection when a Nazi collaborator paid an unexpected visit to the Kooreman home. Anne immediately brought Jaap to Catharina’s sister in North Brabant. Jaap’s parents did not survive the war and he remained with the Kooremans, who had become very attached to him and were happy to raise him as their own son. After the liberation, the Kooremans also took another orphaned Jewish teenager, Johanna Leah Hartog, into their home. Jaap’s two elder sisters, who had been hidden elsewhere, also moved to be closer to the Kooreman family. On July 16, 1990, Yad Vashem recognized Marinus Kooreman, his wife, Catharina Aukje Kooreman-Jansen, their daughter, Marianne Kooreman, and their foster daughter, Sigrid Vink-Schwarz, as Righteous Among the Nations.