On Wednesday evening, July 16, 1943, the member of the Sicherheitsdienst, Frans Lammers, entered the yard at Koaidyk 15 in It Heidenskip. It is a harbinger of a terrible drama that will take place later.
Frans Lammers was commissioned by the Sicherheitsdienst to track down opponents of the Nazi regime. On Wednesday evening, farmer Hendrik Kuiper was arrested on suspicion of providing shelter to people in hiding and illegally listening to the English radio station. For the residents of the hamlet it was the very last time they would see Kuiper.
A month after his arrest, he was sentenced to two years and three months in prison and a 1000 guilder fine for offering help to people in hiding and listening to the English radio. Via Utrecht he ended up in various camps and prisons in Germany. Every week Kuiper wrote letters to his wife and, when he was imprisoned in Germany, reported in German that he was doing well. Via Kassel, Kuiper ended up in Frankfurt am Main and in early 1945 in Bamberg. But after July 1944, it turned out that Kuiper himself no longer wrote letters…
The fate of Kuiper is still unclear. The War Graves Foundation in The Hague states that the 'last date of death of Kuiper' is assumed to be 29 April 1945. But his body has never been found; investigations by the Red Cross in the years after the war yielded no further information. Kuiper would therefore no longer return to his 'pleats'. His wife continued the business until her death in 1967.
