Like needles in a haystack

Photograph of 19-year-old Jacobus Cornelis Berkelouw (second from the left), partially concealed in a haystack in April 1945 with a group of men who were hidden by a family in Beltrum, the Netherlands. In late 1942, Cornelis was interned and shipped east, but his train was bombed and he managed to escape. He found a farm near the forest in Beltrum where a family was willing to hide him along with a small group of other Jews. He hid from SS officers in a barrel of offal with a straw and managed to stay concealed there despite the SS bayoneting the barrel. Afterwards, the family walled him into the chimney where he stayed for three days while things died down. He spent the rest of the war in hiding.

Cornelis went on to serve in the Dutch Army from 1946-49 in Java, Indonesia. He immigrated to Australia in 1949, arriving in Sydney on 11 October.