Kabbes Frederik

Kabbes, Frederik Willem, born in Vorden, was a farmer in Harfsen, Gelderland, and hid the Krukzieners, a Jewish family of four, from November 1944 until the liberation in April 1945, despite his wife’s objection to sheltering Jews. She said she would shelter non-Jewish refugees, but Frederik insisted that it was precisely the persecuted Jews whom he wanted to save and that if his wife refused she could leave. She gave in and helped look after the family by cooking and doing the laundry.

The Krukzieners, who had moved around from place to place, were brought to the farm by Frederik’s friend Roelof Voskamp*, a Resistance activist, when his own house was no longer safe for them. The parents, Emanuel and Marianne, and the two sons, Nico and Bram (aged nine and 11), were first hidden in haystacks, then in an underground shelter, and later in a wooden chicken coup. On cold winter nights, at hours when the danger was less serious, Frederik invited them in to the house warm up.

When the area was liberated, a Canadian officer, moved by the dramatic emergence of the Jewish family from their humble hiding place, took a photograph of the Kabbes family together with the Krukzieners. The Krukzieners wished to compensate the Kabbes family, but Frederik turned them down, saying: “You can’t pay for that. It is your life.” On June 30, 1983, Yad Vashem recognized Frederik Willem Kabbes as Righteous Among the Nations.