Stumbling Stones Zandhuisweg
Mozes Jacobs
The Stolperstein at Zandhuisweg 84 in Hulshorst was laid on 7 July 2013 for Mozes (Maurits) Jacobs, who had lived at this address with his wife Sara (Suus) Sluijs and daughters Carla and Enny since 26 June 1941. Their third daughter Henriëtte (Jettie) was also born here on 17 January 1942. Maurits Jacobs was arrested in Vierhouten. He tried to escape on the Eibertjespad between Vierhouten and Nunspeet, but was shot in the leg. His life ended on 9 July 1943 in Sobibor.
Maurits (officially Mozes Simon) Jacobs was born in Amsterdam on 26 November 1905 as the son of Simon Jacobs and Kaatje Blitz. He was the second in a family of three sons and a daughter. His father and mother died in Auschwitz in 1942. His brother Philip, his wife and two children aged 15 and 9 suffered the same fate. His younger brother Jacob, his wife and two children aged 5 and 2, also died in Auschwitz in 1942. And his sister Henriette and her husband (27 and 28) did not survive Auschwitz either.
Olympic athlete
Maurits Jacobs was a physical education teacher. In addition to working at a number of schools, he worked for clubs in the evenings. He was a top sportsman who participated in the Olympic Games in Amsterdam in 1928 with the men’s gymnastics team. The Dutch team came in eighth. Jacobs scored many individual points, which meant he finished third in the team. Jacobs regularly participated in international gymnastics tournaments. Among other things, in Budapest on 7 June 1934 with a ‘giant turn’. At the Dutch gymnastics championships he won a bronze medal on 7 December 1930.
On 21 August 1929, Maurits Jacobs married Sara Sluijs in Amsterdam, born 7 January 1905 in Amsterdam as the daughter of David Sluijs and Anna Gans. They went to live in Amsterdam-Oost. Their daughters Carla (29 December 1929) and Enny (21 October 1931) were born there. They lived in Koog aan de Zaan for a short time.
To Vierhouten
In 1939, Jacobs got a job as a gymnastics teacher in the camp for unemployed youth of the AJC (Arbeiders Jeugd Centrale) in Vierhouten. The family moved from Amsterdam to Vierhouten. It didn’t take long because on the day of his birthday (26 November 1940) Jakobs was told that Jewish teachers had been fired by the occupier. He had also started as a leader at the Nunspeet Gymnastics Association. But he had to decline that position as well.
The Jacobs family was able to rent a house at Zandhuisweg 46 in Hulshorst. Their youngest daughter Henriette Simone, or Jettie, was born there on 17 January 1942. Carla and Enny had gone to school in Hulshorst for a while. Until that was no longer allowed. In the photo below you see the Jacobs family in Hulshorst with nephew Loekie (9 years old, Auschwitz 05-11-1942). In the other photo, Maurits Jacobs is the man in the middle, wearing a long leather coat.
Shot down
When the measures against Jews were tightened in 1943, Maurits Jacobs started thinking about going into hiding and started placing the children elsewhere. That’s how Jettie ended up with Tom and Jo van Manen in Vierhouten. On 1 April 1943, Maurits went to Vierhouten to bring some clothes for Jettie. The SS and the police were there to arrest Tom. He was in a resistance organisation that had been betrayed. They asked Jacobs if he was Jewish. The answer was of course no. But the police wanted to check with the municipality. He had to cycle along the Eibertjespad to Nunspeet with the police behind him.
Because he knew that things would go wrong, he jumped off his bike, threw it in front of the police and fled into the forest. The police shot and he was hit in the knee and so he had no chance. The bullet was removed from his knee in a hospital in Arnhem. He then went to the hospital in Groningen. On 9 June 1943, Maurits Jacobs was transferred to Westerbork. And death certificate 36 in 1950 gives certainty that he was killed on 9 July 1943 in Sobibor.
Sara Sluijs and the children survived the war. Both Carla and Enny put their experiences in hiding on paper. Enny died in 2008. Carla and Henriëtte have committed themselves to realizing a Stolperstein in Hulshorst. And that was laid by Gunther Demnig.
