Overview

Summer of 1938. An adventurous young Dutch pastor and his wife, are called to a new parish in the northern province of the country, a wide rural lowland of fertile fields and farms. They are novices in the ways of the country folk but make a favourable impression on the locals through their dedication and cheerful service to the community. While life goes on and their outreach touches many lives, across the border only a few miles to the east there looms the very present threat of war. Then suddenly, in May 1940, the German militia over-run the country. In the midst of challenges posed by their spiritual work and the demands of the new overlords, a letter arrives voicing a plaintive cry - from Amsterdam where the substantial population of Dutch Jews is being rounded up for deportation. Lily, a Jewish photographer and casual friend of the couple is on the verge of being taken captive by the Nazis. The pastor and his wife act quickly to grant her refuge in their own home. Presently another joins her, then another, until their household is full of 8 guests, all undercover, and all needing shelter, food and loving care. And with this the danger to the pastor and his wife increases. He is now heavily engaged in the work of saving lives through the Dutch Resistance while most of his congregation has no idea of the extent of their secret involvement. Yet forces that betray are lurking close at hand. Their house is put under surveillance and gradually the noose tightens...

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9781911473763

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Johanna Adriana Appels (Jo) was born on 9th May 1906 in Driebergen (central Netherlands) as the fifth and last child in a rather well-to-do family where the father owned and ran a building contractor company and the mother was a midwife. She obtained a bachelor's degree in English language and literature and would later in life also attend courses at university level in theology. In the early thirties she met her future husband, Bastiaan Jan Ader (Bas), born on 30th December 1909. They married in September 1935, after he had acquired his bachelor's degree in theology. (In the summer of 1936 he set off on an epic bicycle journey to the Holy Land, with her consent and support, also financial.) Johanna worked as an editor in a publishing company in Amsterdam. In October 1938 they went to Nieuwbeerta where he had been appointed the local protestant Reverend. They saw it as a challenge: the population had by and large turned communist, due to extreme income disparities between farmers and farmhands, and had turned away from the church, due to teachings so liberal that they lost next to all content. Jo worked alongside Bas in the parish. Life during the first years of the German occupation remained relatively untouched. That changed when a former acquaintance of Jo, of Jewish origin, asked by letter if she could come to stay with them to hide from the Germans. The answer was positive and accompanied by the suggestion to bring someone else, to fight the boredom. It was the beginning of their heavy involvement in the resistance. Yad Vashem reckons that they managed to save between 200 and 300 Jewish compatriots. On 19th Apil 1942 Jo gave birth to Bastiaan Johan Christiaan (Basjan), and on 4th November 1944 to Diederik Antonius Viktor Emanuel (Erik) while her husband was in prison. On 20th November 1944 he was executed by the Nazi's. The war time diary Jo wrote in deep secret she turned into a book: Een Groninger Pastorie in de Storm. It was translated into German and Finnish. In Dutch it saw 13 editions over the years. One of the survivors wrote a book and devoted part of it to her time in hiding with Bas and Jo. Johanna-Ruth Dobschiner: Selected to Live. After the war the parish elders appointed a new Reverend. Jo moved to the other village that was part of the parish, called Drieborg, and worked towards the goal of founding a building that would house all the club activities her husband and she had set up there and would double also as a small church for services. In 1950 this dream came true, paid for by the royalties of her book, the receipts from her many lectures and from sympathisers. She worked there until her late seventies. In her eighties she became gradually incapacitated by the onset of Alzheimers. Jo died on 31st July 1994. She is buried in the graveyard in Nieuwbeerta. She had created a Foundation to support the work she had set up in that particular village. This Foundation still exists and received a large donation from Jo's private wealth. At the moment this Foundation supports the ongoing work of the church in the wider area.

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