* Landsmeer 2 June 1876
† Amsterdam 7 May 1945
Jan Goede was born in Landsmeer on June 2, 1876. He died, 68 years old, on May 7, 1945 on the Dam when German Kriegsmariners started shooting from the Groote Club into the crowd gathered on the Dam. He was an egg sales man. He lived at the Tuinpad (now Van Beekstraat 8) in Landsmeer where he also had his egg trading company. His house had been built after the flood in 1916. He was the first person in his village to have a telephone connection: nr 1.
Els Verweij-Goede, who was 8 years old when her grandfather died on the Dam, remembers her parents’ and grandmother’s sadness. Grandfather Jan had biked to Amsterdam – on the bike he had kept hidden all during the war – to watch the Canadians arrive. Klaas Janszoon Goede, Els’ father, had to identify his father’s body in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam. He was survived by his wife and 7 children.
Source: Gouden Oorlogsherinneringen
Ms. Margaretha C. Gortva-Goede (1930) who is Els’ older sister adds: “My grandfather had an international egg trading company. During the war he stopped trading internationally as well as within the Netherlands. He had broad interests and he was there when the Germans entered Amsterdam.
On May 7th, 1945, he wanted to watch the arrival of the Canadians and went to the Dam. This is where he was killed.”
When Jan did not come home, Klaas Goede (1900), his second son, went to look for him. He found his father in the Zuiderkerk. (During the famine in the last winter of the war the Zuiderkerk was used as a mortuary.) I was on the Amsterdam side of Landsmeer that day – the Zuideinde – and suddenly my father was there on his bike, he had come from Amsterdam. He said: “I’d go home if I were you because grandfather was shot at the Dam. I found him in the Zuiderkerk. Later (after a few days?) Klaas and his younger brother Gerard Ferdinand (1914-2004) identified their father in the Nieuwe Kerk. The dead were lying on the ground in white sheets. This is what Gerard told his nephew Jan (1936) shortly before he died. Klaas and Gerard put their father on a handcart and brought him home.”
The death certificate shows that Jan Goede died due to multiple bullet wounds, one of which was in his head.
Ms M.C. Gortva-Goede: “We know that there was also a bullet that went through his coat. When grandfather was laid out at home, Ineke (Catharina Gerarda) Huber-Goede (1940), Klaas’ daughter, saw one bullet. The bullet was cylindric, about 3 cm long. (We don’t have this bullet anymore and we have no picture of it either.) Later, after the coat had been cleaned, I saw a bullet hole in the back of about 3mm in diameter.
Great-niece Goede: The brief story, the mentioning of the fact, that ‘uncle Jan’ (Jan Goede, brother of my grandfather)was shot at the Dam by the Germans, was in my youth a story that was regular told. My parents(born in 1918 and 1924, still alive) say that uncle Jan was shot in the back, the bullet is found in his tie, fibers of his tie stood inside out.
Jan Goede was buried at the Algemene Begraafplaats in Landsmeer after a short memorial at the family’s house led by vicar Binnema.
The family Goede has lost more family members to the war( Source:Family book via Alexander Bol named Goede szn): The eldest son of Jan Goede and his wife Geertje Kalf was Simon, born Landsmeer September 3 1899 and single. During the occupation he stepped into the breach for freedom of the youth in all kinds of ways.His nickname in the resistance was ‘uncle Tom’. In the spring of 1943 he had to go into hiding in the Achterhoek because of his part in the resistance, however he was caught by the SD on May 1 1944, via Oranienburg he was transported to Ravensbruck. In April 1945 he and others were liberated by the Russians, but Simon Jansz Goede died by exhaustion on June 24 1945. His name is mentioned at the monument in Zelhelm.
Jan’s half-brother Lucas(1859-1943), a son of the first marriage of the father, also lost his son, Simon Lucas, born in Landsmeer November 24 1890. He had an active role in the resistance, he was captured and put on transport to Kamp Vught. Later he was taken over to Neuengamme by Hamburg, were he died on October 20 1944. His mother died in Landsmeer, two days later.
Simon and Simon Lucas are both mentioned on the website of the Foundation War graves.