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NL 
From 'Stampersgat in wartime'
Jan van Merrienboer was a servant and child at home with Frie Vogelaars, who had a greengrocer's shop 'at the back end' (now Gastelsedijk West 80). During the liberation and the shelling of Stampersgat, the Vogelaars family had fled with Jan to the Huysmans family farm in the Prinslandse polder, where they found shelter in the potato store. Jan had met a German soldier who had told him he wanted to desert or go into hiding. Jan was willing to help the soldier go into hiding. However, he had to give him his pistol and pocketbook. The soldier did so and this proved fatal for Jan.
"Jan had to pay for his tenacity to spare us with death."
When checked by a German patrol, the pistol was found on him. Jan was subsequently captured and transported to Rotterdam. There he was shot on 4 November, the day Stampersgat was liberated. A member of the Rotterdam underground later handed over to his family the silver ring he had received from the Vogelaars family and his pocketbook that still contained a bullet hole.
Jan van Merrienboer is buried at the Field of Honour for war victims and resistance fighters in Loenen in the Veluwe.
Piet Huysmans said:
"The Germans forced Orion Ernest, Jan van Merrienboer and myself to stand with arms and legs wide. They started searching and measuring they came across something hard under Jan van Merrienboer's clothes. It turned out to be a German pistol. We were extremely shocked. We had no idea how Jan could have got that gun. Why was he carrying it? Before we could think of an answer to such questions, the Germans ripped open our clothes from top to bottom with a dagger. They found nothing else, but that gun was reason to pull out the guns and take us to the Pannehoeve, a little further on.
There we sat in a concrete shack for a few hours. Jan, Orion and I then agreed to pretend we did not know each other otherwise. Jan swore he would take all the blame. We had to get away, he had that gun in his pocket and that was why we had ended up in this misery. He explained how he had got the gun. He had got it from a German deserter who had sought shelter with Frie Vogelaars. Jan Orion and I were taken to Dinteloord and interrogated by the Ortskommandatur. We were able to go at some point. But Jan van Merrienboer had to stay. He was pushed onto a cattle truck. Jan paid for his insistence on sparing us with death."
