Klaas Nieboer (born in Foxhol on August 14, 1925 – executed in Vught on August 22, 1944) was a young Dutch resistance fighter during the Second World War. His story is one of courage, conviction, and tragedy, reflecting the harsh realities faced by ordinary families under Nazi occupation.
In the early years of the war, food shortages and strict rationing laws led to severe punishments for anyone suspected of slaughtering livestock without German permission. In July 1941, several residents of Hoogezand were arrested for allegedly butchering animals illegally, among them the local butcher Cornelis Nieboer, Klaas’s father. He was sent to Germany and imprisoned in the Wewelsburg concentration camp, where he died in April 1942. Klaas, then a teenager still attending school, lost his father to Nazi brutality at just sixteen years old.
At school, Klaas’s independent spirit was already visible. When a teacher was insulted and the students were ordered to apologize collectively, Klaas refused — he hadn’t participated and saw no reason to pretend otherwise. He left school soon afterward and began working at the Scholten factory, later continuing evening studies in commerce. When he was called up for forced labor in Germany, he refused once again to comply with Nazi orders and went into hiding.
While in hiding, Klaas joined the resistance movement in northern Drenthe. During a raid in Noord-Sleen on May 15, 1944, intended to obtain identity papers, he was shot. Though he managed to escape, he was later captured and imprisoned in Assen before being transferred to Camp Vught. There, only days after his nineteenth birthday, Klaas Nieboer was executed by firing squad on August 22, 1944. His burial place remains unknown, but his name is engraved on the memorial at Vught, and on his mother Janna’s gravestone in Hoogezand.
To honor his sacrifice, the Hoogezand municipal council renamed the Meerweg in Foxhol — where his family had lived — to K. Nieboerweg in July 1945, ensuring his name would live on as a symbol of local resistance and bravery. Decades later, in 2014, a memorial was unveiled in Foxhol dedicated to its wartime heroes. The inscription reads: “Foxhol commemorates its resistance heroes Gerrit Imbos, Klaas Nieboer, Evert Radema & all those who did not return by the hand of the occupier. 1940–1945.”
Klaas Nieboer’s life was brief but marked by integrity and defiance — a testament to the quiet strength of a young man who chose principle over submission in one of history’s darkest times.
