Pulskens, Coba Jacoba Maria, born 26-05-1884 in Tilburg 
the third child of Nicolaas Pulskens and Johanna, born Adams Pulskens, where she grew up in poor circumstances in a working-class family. After primary school and domestic science school with the nuns at Korvel, 
she went to work in Antwerp for a Jewish diamond dealer family. She was in Belgium in 1914 when the German army invaded the country 
and dragged it into the First World War. During those German occupation years, Coba was involved in the Belgian underground. In that period, this mainly meant hiding copper that was requisitioned by the Germans for the war industry. Out of necessity, she became increasingly adept at misguiding checkpoints, in addition to embezzlement.
After the war years, she returned to the Netherlands and in 1931 was appointed as a cleaning lady in Tilburg at the Public Works building on Lange Schijfstraat. 
She also worked at the Canisiusschool now and then.
Coba remained unmarried for the rest of her life. “The boys don’t think I’m pretty enough,” she says. She is known as an easy-going, modest woman who enjoys conviviality. “Our dear Lord” and “our dear Lady” are her support and confidante. She prefers to visit the Capuchin church on the Korvelseweg every Sunday, because they can preach so beautifully.
When she experiences a German occupation for the second time in 1940, her reaction is more laconic than hateful: “those Krauts have to go, because we didn’t ask them to come to Tilburg with their bragging and bombast”.
From 1942 onwards, Coba becomes active in the resistance as a helper for people in hiding. For example, she brings Jews, downed allied pilots and a few Limburg resistance fighters over. Despite warnings from her brother Nico, she takes the latter to café L’Echo des Montagnes 
a few times, where officers of the Grüne Polizei 
from the Willem II barracks often knock back pints of beer. “The boys need to be let out every now and then”, she thinks.
In 1943, traitors managed to infiltrate a Limburg resistance group, some of whose members had previously been in hiding with Coba. The Germans then abused her home address to lure people in hiding into a trap, without Coba or her colleague in the resistance Leonie van Harssel 
suspecting this. In any case, the resistance saw reason to stop using Coba’s ‘contaminated’ house as a hiding place for the coming months. Resistance fighter Leonie van Harssel safely home in Tilburg in the summer of 1945. On 09-07-1944, the same day as Coba Pulskens, she was arrested by the Sicherheitsdienst and ended up in the camps Vught, 
Haaren and Dachau 
via the police station on the Bisschop Zwijsenstraat. She is the only one of a group of twelve to survive the war. Harry Aarts, 
born on 20-03-1915 in Westerhoven (Bergeijk), was the son of a police officer and worked as a detective in Eindhoven. He was unmarried and lived with his younger brother Jan (1921-1989), also working for the Eindhoven police, at Sint Martinusstraat 22 in my hometown Eindhoven. On 19-08-1944, age 29, at half past eight in the evening, Harry is shot together with other resistance men Marinus Gerard “Rien” van Bruggen, age 43 
and Piet Haagen, age 22. 
When Coba took in Allied pilots again in 1944, things went wrong. The resistance in Oisterwijk and Eindhoven again called on Coba to take in some pilots in hiding, from where they were sent to the Belgian border. At that time, she had already taken in three pilots at home. The transport of the Allied pilots was organised by police officer Hendrikus M Johnnes “Harry” Aarts from Eindhoven and Jan Brunnekreef 
and Piet Haagen from the Oisterwijk resistance group of Bim van der Klei. 
Van der Klei lived in Geldrop and died there on 27-03-1997. Bim van der Klei was 76 years old and made a great contribution to the resistance in Oisterwijk.
On 08-07-1944, they transport two pilots from Eindhoven to Coba in Tilburg. The car is stopped in Moergestel. The occupants are immediately exposed; the two pilots do not speak Dutch and weapons are found in the car. The Allies are detained in Gilze and Rijen; the resistance fighters in the House of Detention in ‘s-Hertogenbosch. 
After interrogation, Jan Brunnekreef is taken to Tilburg the next day by the Sicherheitsdienst (
) to point out Coba’s house. When the Germans raid the house, they find the three pilots already there who are arrested on the spot and shot dead in the garden. Three Air Force Officers murdered by the Gestapo on the 9th July 1944. F/O Roy Edward Carter RCAF aged 23, 
F/O Jack Nott RAAF aged 26 
and F/Lt. Ronald Arthur Walker DFC RAFVR, aged 21. Coba herself is arrested with fellow townsman and resistance comrade Leonie van Harssel and taken to camp Vught. There, during interrogation, they discover to their horror that the Germans have known for a year that she has taken in people in hiding.
Leonie would survive the war (she was liberated in Dachau), but Coba was transported to the women camp Ravensbrück 
with female prisoners during the evacuation of Vught on 05-09-1944 (‘Mad Tuesday’). Dolle Dinsdag (English: Mad Tuesday) took place in the Netherlands (at the time occupied by Nazi Germany) on 05-09-1944, when celebrations were prompted after broadcasts enthusiastic incorrectly reported that Breda had been liberated by Allied forces. Alas this was not the truth and many people died.
Death and burial ground of Pulskens, Coba Jacoba Maria.
Coba was killed in the gas chamber of Rasvensbrück women concentration camp in February 1945. She was 60 years old and was posthumously honoured with the American Medal of Freedom 
and various monuments and street names in and around Tilburg.
Coba Jacoba Maria Pulkens was killed in Feb 1945 (age 60) in Brandenburg, Germany, her body was burned and the ashes scattered in the meadows of Ravensbrück. In 1947, the municipality had a memorial stone placed at her home – in 1989, due to its poor condition, it was replaced by a replica. Under this replica, behind glass, is a sign, probably from Coba’s kitchen. A commemorative plaque was hung in the hall of Public Works, which ended up in the collection of the Tilburg City Museum after the building was demolished. During the fortieth anniversary of the liberation (27-10-1984), local residents unveiled a memorial stone in the park of Coba Pulskenslaan. That same day, a delegation from the Royal Air Force presented a Coba plaque, which was placed in the chapel of Onze Lieve Vrouwe ter Nood. Every year on 27 October, a commemoration is held at the stone by children from a nearby school that has adopted the monument. In Oosterhout (NB) there is a Coba Pulskensdreef.
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