When the liberation came, I no longer had a father

“Here, in this painting, you can see my father. And in this one, you can see our house. That’s where I lived, with my parents and my younger sister. She was two and a half years younger than me. We lived on Eerste Bleekveldstraat, opposite the Spaarbank (Bank building).

My given name is actually Goossen, but at school and at VV Theole, it was quickly shortened to Koos. When the war started, I was 13. At first, life returned to normal quite quickly. Tiel had no strategic importance in those early years. I still played football on the street with my friends. Even at school, the war was rarely discussed. But at home, it was different.

My father was a house painter and a man of principle. He refused to hand in our radio. It stood in a recess in the wall. He placed a large cabinet in front of it, one that stored the administrative records of his painting business. He even cut a square hole in the back of the cabinet, so the radio could still be retrieved. People would often come over to listen, including the Lutheran minister who lived diagonally across from us. Not that we always heard much—the Germans were highly effective at jamming the broadcasts!

One day, while I was at school, the Germans suddenly entered our home. They walked straight to that cabinet. It must have been a betrayal. ‘Hans, wir haben’s!’ my mother heard one of them say to the other. They left her alone, but they took my father. Not long after, we heard he’d been executed near the Water Tower. His body was supposedly taken to Utrecht.

Shortly after the German capitulation, I spent some time in Bethesda Hospital to prevent looting. I slept on an operating table. Tiel had been liberated. But when the liberation came, I no longer had a father. And to this very day, I do not know what they did with his body…”