A small moustache-brush

This very small brush is an item that goes back to Jan Hieminga, who was the head of the school at The Knipe, near Heerenveen. Looking at his photos, it is clear that from 1903 on (or thereabouts) he sported an impressive moustache that will have been part of his public image for quite some time. On later photos, most of these having been taken after his retirement in 1942, the broad moustache has been reduced to a smaller version. This small brush (compare its size to the US quarter on the first photo) is complete with a small carrying case and enabled him to keep his moustache in fine form throughout the day.

His son Bouwe, my grandfather, also wore a moustache for a large part of his life. Perhaps he also used this same brush, having inherited it from his father?

Pair of handcuffs

During WWII the family of my grandfather lived in Groningen at Radesingel 1, a house that is still around on a corner about halfway between the train station and the centre of the city. According to several stories, the house was sometimes used to provide an overnight place for people who had to flee from the German occupiers, moving them on the next day. With Bouwe Hieminga running a housing bureau at the time, he may have been well placed to organise locations where people could stay for a longer period. The other main resistance member of the family, who sadly did not survive his incarceration in Neuengamme camp, was of course Jetze Veldstra, but I will share that story on another page (click here, it's only available in Dutch for now).

Going back to Bouwe, at one point in 1943 or 1944 he was wanted by the local police. Looking back, it is likely that this was because of him being wanted for the 'Arbeitseinsatz', a programme that saw able-bodied men being shipped to Germany to work in factories or other jobs there. If the authorities were looking for him in connection to his resistance work, it would have been the German authorities knocking on the door, not the local Dutch policemen who turned up on this occasion.

What happened was that these policemen turned up to arrest Bouwe Hieminga, but either through luck or through some form of warning, he was able to stay out of sight of the police. In Groningen they had 'Tante Oma' living with them, and she decided to keep the policemen on their side, offering them a cup of coffee (or the ersatz-version that was available during wartime) and sitting down for a chat with them. As they were waiting for Bouwe, enjoying the coffee and the company, time went by up to the point where the policemen decided to give up and leave the house. When they did, they completely forgot to take the pair of handcuffs that they had brought to put on Bouwe's wrists with them.

Bouwe decided to move to Oldeouwer, cycling to the farmstead home of Jetze Veldstra to stay underneath the authorities 'radar', where their young daughter Tineke had already moved to at an earlier stage. Later during latter stages of the war Geertje also moved to Oldeouwer when the situation in Groningen did not feel safe enough to stay there. She also used a bicycle to travel the 75 km from Groningen to Oldeouwer with their two sons Jan and Jetze.

The handcuffs stayed in the family as a reminder of how close they had come to lose Bouwe. For many years they hung above his desk in their Scheveningen home. He also kept a piece of shrapnel from an exploded bomb on his desk as a paper weight. Those two items reminded Bouwe of the war years.

Today, this pair of handcuffs is still around, but they are not in pristine shape anymore. When he was younger, Jan Hieminga took them to school on one occasion, probably for a show-and-tell session. He snapped them around the wrist of one of his friends but forgot that when the handcuffs were left, the policemen had not included a key. Because of this, one half of the pair had to be cut open to free Jan's friend.

This same pair of handcuffs has been on display at an exhibition about Jetze Veldstra in Ouwsterhaule, back in the 90s/00s.