Hoogstraat 80

In the Chapel of St. Paul's Abbey in Oosterhout, a memorial portrait has been placed in memory of Father Jacques Kerssemakers.

Soon after the German invasion of the Netherlands, Kerssemakers committed his first act of resistance. He helped a French soldier, a priest, who had been taken prisoner of war by the Germans escape and return to France. A little later in the war, Kerssemakers came into contact with former major Jan Marginus Somer through Ad Hoekstra. Somer was the local leader of the Order Service and wanted to properly map the military airport Gilze-Rijen in order to forward that data to England. Kerssemakers was ready to help him. He worked with several people, including Jan Huijbregts. Huijbregts had previously attempted to escape to England and was then arrested.

The Jewish couple Benjamin Gokkes and Eva de Bock went into hiding in September 1942 with the mother of Jan Huijbregts on Ploegstraat in Breda. Huijbregts wanted to smuggle the family across the border to Belgium when there was a suitable opportunity. His mother was too scared that the couple would be discovered. In consultation with Father Kerssemakers, it was therefore decided that the spouses would be transferred to St. Paul's Abbey.

Huijbregts went to Oosterhout on October 10, 1942. In Korte Ploegstraat, however, he saw Bartel Boogerd and one Visser, both helpers of the Sicherheitsdienst. Huijbregts managed to escape, but Benjamin Gokkes was arrested together with his wife. During the interrogations they talked and mentioned several names. The Gokkes couple did not end well. Both died in the German concentration camps within a year.
Arrest and imprisonment

On the same day the Sicherheitsdienst visited St. Paul's Abbey. All the brothers were eating at that time, silently as usual. The abbot Dom Mähler told Kerssemakers that the SD was there for him and gave the monk the choice of leaving through the front or back door. Kerssemakers decided to go with the SD, possibly not to endanger the other monks. Shortly after this, Jan Huijbregts was also arrested, as well as a number of other members of the group of Kerssemakers, namely Ad Aarts, Jos van Amelsvoort, Theo and Piet van Heerbeek, Jacques Litjens and Guus van Raaij. Ad Hoekstra managed to escape to Limburg in time. He found the Kerssemakers group to be far too careless. For example, several group members kept lists with the addresses of the other members of the group.

For the first few months, Kerssemakers was detained in Kamp Haaren, the SD prison that was located at the major seminary in Haaren, where Kerssemakers had lived for several years. In a letter to the abbot, Kerssemakers remarkably described in detail where his underwear was, asking to bring it along. It was there that Abbot Mähler found the secret drawings of the airport. On March 22, 1943, members of the group Kerssenmakers were transferred to the Huis van Bewaring on Gansstraat in Utrecht.

The members of the Kerssemakers group appeared on March 30 and 31 before the German court martial. All members except Aarts and Van Raaij were sentenced to death. It is striking that they were only charged with espionage and no Jewish help. Apparently, the Germans were more attached to that first offense. Kerssemakers was distraught the first two days after the verdict was passed, then he calmed down. Van Amelsvoort, Piet and Theo van Heerbeek and Van Raaij eventually received a pardon, the request for pardon from Huijbregts and Kerssemakers was rejected. The other six members of the group would spend the rest of the war in the German labor and concentration camps, but came out alive. The death sentence of Kerssemakers and Huijbregts was executed on May 7, 1943 in Fort de Bilt. Kerssemakers and Huijbregts were executed there together with a number of others in the morning.

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