Westlock has lost one of its most beloved people.
Hendrikje “Henny” Dobyanski (née Ekkel) passed away on Aug. 30 in Barrhead after a challenging journey through dementia.
Born Sept. 19, 1923 in the Netherlands, Dobyanski led a life that was anything but ordinary.
Living in Holland during the Second World War, she found herself in the middle of the action, working with the Dutch underground in order to sabotage the Germans and help Jews avoid the horrors of the Holocaust.
It wasn’t by any means a fun experience negotiating her way through the war.
“All that time there were worries,” she told Westlock News reporter Derek Logan in 2004. “There was fear; there was anxiety. I never had a chance to be carefree.”
Working in a railway freight office, she had access to information about the movement of German supplies and weapons. She and her fellow underground operatives used the railway’s telegraph lines to relay that information to the resistance’s intelligence, helping to undermine the Nazis.
One of her family’s more dangerous wartime actions was hiding a Jewish mother and daughter, an act that, if discovered, would have meant certain death for at least the head of the household.
Fortunately, their brave act went undetected by the Nazis, and the Jewish family survived the war.
One of her more vivid memories came in the hours after the German surrender, when she was in a public square outside her local police shop.
“This little round window at the very top opens up, and then a flag stick comes out of it, and we saw our old flag again. After five years. And I remember running home and telling my mother, ‘We are free because the flag is out at the police bureau,’” she said in 2004.
“And that’s when my mother cried. During the war you never saw her cry, but that time she sat down and cried. And I’ll never forget that.”
When the war in Holland finally ended in 1945, Dobyanski’s life changed in two ways. The war was over; and she met Job Dobyanski, the man who would become her husband and bring her to Canada.
They married, moved to Flatbush and started a family.
Since those early days, Dobyanski got involved in her community in a myriad of ways, from volunteering with many community groups to working her way up in the education system during a 30-year career that began in 1960 in Westlock as a Grade 7 teacher.
She retired in 1990 as vice principal at what is now R.F. Staples School — in essence educating more than a generation of area youth.
Her hard work and dedication to her students and the community was not lost on anyone who met her.
A small sampling of the groups she volunteered for included the Legion, Meals on Wheels, the library board, Victim Services and the museum.
One of those people who she touched was Sister Eileen Boyle, who first met Dobyanski in 1993.
“We became very very good friends and that friendship went on till last week,” Boyle said, explaining she was with Dobyanski when she passed away.
Boyle said Dobyanski’s passing hit everyone she knew very hard.
“It’s a big loss, it’s absolutely a bit loss,” she said.
“She was loved by many. She touched so many lives, it’s incredible.”
