Stamboom Veenstra, Dijkstra, Peperkamp en Van den Dobbelsteen » Henk Huijbers (1916-2002)

Persoonlijke gegevens Henk Huijbers 

• Hij is geboren op 8 juni 1916 in Ambt-Doetinchem.
• Beroep: priester.
• Feit: (diversen) .

  TITLE:
  Henk Huijbers fonds
  
  PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION:
  51 photographs : b&w copy negs
  
  DATES:
  Copied 1998 (originally created [ca. 1937-1956])
  
  ADMINISTRATIVE HISTORY/BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
  Father Henk Huijbers was born on June 8, 1916 in Limburg, Holland. He studied at the Fathers of St. Montfort Monastery in Belgium and then entered the order of the Oblates Mary Immaculate of the Catholic Church. He took his first religious vows in 1937. When World War II broke out, Father Huijbers was studying philosophy in Velaines, located on the French border. In 1941, the students were thrown out of the Oblate Monastery by the Gestapo and were forced to continue their studies in secret in an old attic. Father Huijbers had also studied architecture and became known as the 'builder priest' early in his career. In the attic room, he created individual cells for the forty-four monks by sewing old grain bags into curtains and building the night tables from plywood. The students eventually fled to Dunkirk where Father Huijbers volunteered as an ambulance driver with the Red Cross, returning evacuees to their homes in Belgium and Holland from the French coast. He became involved with the Dutch Resistance afterhe successfully evacuated two injured Allied pilots who were shot down over Holland. He became chaplain for the Dutch Resistance, known as the L.O.K.P, and the Belgium Resistance, known as the White Brigade, where he served the wounded, people in hiding from the German war camps, and other members of the underground. Father Huijbers was ordained to the priesthood on July 26, 1943 and celebrated his first mass in the secrecy of his parents' barn. In the same year, he was arrested by the Gestapo, on suspicion of his involvement with the underground. He escaped the concentration camp the same night he was captured with the help of the Resistance and assumed new identities in Holland, France and Belgium. From 1944 to 1947, he was chaplain for the Dutch troops affiliated with the 29th U.S. Infantry Division in Germany. He survived the Battle of the Bulge and returned to Holland to continue his work in the Oblates Mary Immaculate order. In 1947, Father Huijbers arrived in North Battleford, Saskatchewan to fill a temporary position for another priest. He traveled to Mayo in 1948 to assist Bishop Jean-Louis Coudert for one year and remained in the Yukon where he became involved in building recreation halls, community clubs, churches, a rectory, and a museum. Except for a five year period in Cassiar, Father Huijbers spent most of his time in the Mayo-Elsa area. By the 1970s, Father Huijbers was travelling weekly to Haines Junction, Destruction Bay, Beaver Creek, and Burwash Landing where he coordinated various community building projects. In Burwash Landing, he initiated a project to supply electrical power and worked with the Kluane First Nation to fund and design a museum. He built St. Henry's Church in Elsa and constructed another church in the now vacant community of Calumet. As a result of his work with the Dutch underground during the war, Father Huijbers was awarded the Silver Resistance Remembrance Cross by the Dutch Consul General in Vancouver in 1982. His commitment to the Yukon and its people was recognized by the Commissioner's Certificate of Merit in 1986, and the Yukon Historical and Museum's Association Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998. In his later years, Father Huijbers lived in Whitehorse at the Oblate Centre, a seniors' retirement home that he helped build. Father Huijbers died in Whitehorse on July 5, 2002.
  
  SCOPE AND CONTENT:
  The fonds consists of photographs documenting Father Henk Huijber's life in Europe during World War II and his travels throughout the Yukon. The photographs include images of Father Huijbers passports, identities, and the Red Cross ambulance used during the war, the Oblate of Mary Immaculate novitiates (1936-1937), Father Huijber's ordination portrait (1943), and the chalice he designed that was given to him at his first Mass. The fonds also includes photographs of Lower Post, Mayo, Keno, and Dawson City landscapes, scenes of the Alaska Highway, the dogteam in Watson Lake, snowshoeing, the dredge on Bonanza Creek, and the church and rectory at Burwash Landing.

• Hij is overleden op 5 juli 2002 in Yukon (Canada), hij was toen 86 jaar oud.
• Een kind van Antonius Gerardus Huijbers en Johanna Cregten
• Deze gegevens zijn voor het laatst bijgewerkt op 29 maart 2024.

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