Tops, Jacobus “Jaques” Cornelis, born 12-05-1926 in the village of Zeelst 
in the municipality of Veldhoven where the webmaster lives know.
As a carpenter, he is put to work at the German military camp near Welschap airport 
during the, among other things, war. Jaques is part of the resistance group of Peter Zuid, 
the alias of resistance man Johannes Josephus Franciscus “Jan” Borghouts. 
Through his work, Jac. is able to pass on intelligence about the airfield and the bunker being built there. He is also affiliated with Peter Zuid’s commando group and involved in various acts of sabotage. Jan Borghouts became known during the war as a resistance fighter under the pseudonym “Peter Zuid. After the war head of personnel affairs in the Air Force, among other things. His Secretariat of State was overshadowed by a serious illness, from which he died. Minister De Jong, when commemorating him in the House of Representatives after his death, characterized him as a man of one piece, completely incorruptible, competent and animated by deeply honest human feelings. Borghouts died 05-02-1966, in Rotterdam, age 55.
In 1944 Jac Tops. was called up for the Arbeitseinsatz, the compulsory labor in Germany, but Jac. refused to comply and went into hiding in the outskirts of Oirschot, in the farm at address Polsdonken 2, where Martien Schoenmakers, 
among others, was also hiding. This is also where an English paratrooper who had landed near the farm was taken into hiding from the Germans.
On the night of August 28-29, 1944, Jac., Martien and several other people in hiding were arrested by Germans hunting for resistance fighters. He is detained in Camp Amersfoort 
and then deported to Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg. 
There Jac. makes long days of extremely hard work in the brick factories and clay pits, while being exposed to all kinds of severe beatings by the guards. He may also have been used from the outside camps in the construction of the Friesenwall, 
a planned (and ultimately failed) fortification along the German coast that was supposed to repel any Allied invasion from the North Sea. The rations are not only totally inadequate, but barely even edible. By the hundreds, the prisoners are housed in barracks, with multiples on a single, filthy brit. Shelter, clothing, hygiene and medical care are sorely lacking, so that infectious diseases spread quickly and lead to mass mortality.
Death and burial ground of Tops, Jacobus “Jaques” Cornelus.
Jac. lived to see the liberation and the end of the war in Europe, but severely weakened as he was, liberation came too late for him. He shared this fate with tens of thousands of other prisoners who would succumb to the hardships suffered shortly after their liberation. After the war, he returned weakened and malnourished to the Netherlands where he was first admitted to the Gelderland Harrenveld.His brother Harry and sister An picked him up there and took him to the friars in Eersel in the Jacobus Monestery, for nursing.
The founding date of this convent of the Sisters of Charity of Schijndel is 05-11-1902. The wealthy Eersel family De Kort made half of their wealth and farm with staff available for the foundation of a house of charity.
On 24-07-1945, Jac. died in Eersel, aged 19, from exhaustion and malnutrition. He finds his final resting place on the National Field of Honour in Loenen.
Leave a Reply