Johannes Cornelis Jeurissen

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Additional information

Son of Frans Jeurissen and Hubertina Elisabeth Jeurissen-Theunissen.

Even after a thorough investigation, the circumstances surrounding the death of Johannes Cornelis Jeurissen remain a great mystery. It is believed that Jan was pro-German, possibly misled by German propaganda or perhaps trying to appear tough in front of his peers. The fact is that, by his own admission, he had made a mistake. It began with a handwritten letter that Jan wrote to his family…

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Translation of the letter:

“Dearest Mum and Dad, Brother and Sisters,

I just wanted to write you a short note. I am well, and I hope the same for all of you. First of all, I must tell you that I shall not be coming home for the duration of the war. A priest has visited me; he heard my confession and told me that I have been readmitted to the Church and can return to society after the war.

Dear Father and Mother, I am terribly sorry for what I have put you through. Only now do I realise what I have done and how kind you, Father and Mother, have always been to me. I therefore hope that you will forgive me for everything I have done to you and that, after the war, I may return to the family circle and start my life afresh in good spirits. I hope that you will all pray for me, as I myself do for myself and for you. Once again, Father and Mother, please grant me forgiveness for everything I have done to you so far in my life.

Please accept my warmest regards to you all, including Stien and Paul, Leo and little Frans. But above all to you, Father and Mother, Brother and Sisters, from your son Jan.”

At the end of 2011, I received a message from a close acquaintance of the Jeurissen family, who had been working on this long-standing missing persons case as a so-called ‘Cold Case’, asked whether I might have any further information about Johannes Cornelis Jeurissen, and after reading the letter above, I soon came to the following tentative conclusion. The remains – which were, at that time, unknown to me – recovered in the Zandbos in September 1944 must have been those of Johannes Cornelis Jeurissen…

In my archives, amongst the files for ‘unknown war victims’, I kept various notes from and for the municipality of Deurne, including an invoice from contractor H. Aldenzee (residence at Heuvel B 55c) for a coffin, including assistance with the coffining and burial, which states “The group commander of the Royal Military Police in Deurne declares that on 13 September 1944, Military Police officers Vlielander and Somers in Deurne provided assistance in the exhumation of an unidentified body in the Sandbos in Deurne and that H. Aldenzee placed this body in a coffin.” This invoice included a sum of f. 57.00. A further invoice for f 4.50 was submitted by Wilhelmus Bankers (with residence at Brugge C 69) for the transport, by horse and cart, of the body of an unidentified person from the Sandbos to the cemetery in Deurne on 13 September 1944. Both invoices were claimed under the temporary police decree of 1946, relating to 1944, under ‘other police expenditure’.

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In addition to the above notes, I also found a note in the Red Cross archives stating that the post-mortem examination of the remains was carried out by Petrus van Noord, at that time a general practitioner with a practice in Deurne.

For the family of Johannes Cornelis Jeurissen, the above (farewell) letter was the last sign of life from their son, who had been missing since May 1944; Even after the war, nothing more was heard of Jan until the Jeurissen family received a letter from Chaplain C.F.J. (Cor) Janssen. An acquaintance of the Jeurissen family, he had worked as a curate in and around Roermond (Maasniel); he was also active in the Resistance during the war years.

Captain-Chaplain Cor Janssen set sail on 22 October 1946 on the steamship “SS Johan de Witt” from Amsterdam to Tanjung Priok (Indonesia), Dutch troops were permitted in Indonesia at that time to take over British positions (police operations), during a brief stop on 1 November 1946, the steamship was anchored in the harbour of Port Said, where the chaplain wrote the letter below to the Jeurissen family.

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During the long voyage to Indonesia, the chaplain got to know soldiers who were from Deurne; one of them confessed to the chaplain that he had been with the man who was said to have shot Jan. In the letter to the family, the chaplain stated that Jan had died fully prepared to meet Our Lord, as a priest had been with him until the very end. According to the witness, Jan was shot in ‘het Zandbos’ and was also buried there. On 2 December 1954, the family finally registered the death of Johannes Cornelis Jeurissen on 10 July 1944 in Deurne.

The chaplain’s letter prompted me to trace the passenger lists of the steamship ‘SS Johan de Witt’; although no complete passenger list was found, seventeen soldiers from Deurne were listed as having set sail for Indonesia aboard the ‘SS Johan de Witt’ in October 1946. Two of them were former members of the Resistance… both, sadly, have since passed away.

Below: Chaplain Cor Janssen of 3-6 R.I. in his room in Tjipanas in June 1947.

Report of a missing person

Death register