Questioning
A Picture (Willem Wilmink)
Today, it's 68 years agoo that the February strike happened. It's a piece of history that has always intrigued me - I'm not sure why.
Maybe it is the fact that I can't grasp the fact that normal people (Dutch), during a foreign occupation (Nazi's), could let it happen that a group of people (Jews) were secluded from society, bullied openly and transported away to an unkown but probably terrible destination. I guess fear is a big part of it.
And this strike was an outcry against it. This was a way to try to stop it. I couldn't find a pamphlet from those days, so I can't tell you exactly what the strikers demanded. It's quite complicated and there are many factors that led to this day.
What I wanted to share here, is a poem that always reminds me of this happening. It's not the poem that is most often related to it and was written by Jan Campert, called (the song of) the 18 dead
The writer himself wasn't one of the 18 man that were in danger of being executed (15 of the 18 indeed got that fate), despite the perspective of the poem. He did join the resistance, or at least acted against the occupators, got arrested and died in a concentrationcamp. He's a bit of an disputed hero over here, as it turned out later the camp got the worst of him.
Sorry, drifting away from the subject again: the poem I think about goes like this (sorry for the bad translation... I can't get the rhyme of the original in it)
A picture Pictures exist of that raid,
Jonas Daniël Meijerplein
where the German soldiers
are harassing jews
A scared man, with neat shoes
a long jacket and bow tie
is driven across the square
like it is a cattle market
Look, 3 German soldiers stand there
looking at it with a jeering laugh
And a fourth German, he looks aside,
maybe he's (nonetheless) ashamed
Just imagine, you looked at that picture
of that man in his bow tie
and you'd suddenly realise
He was your own father!
Sometimes my mind also wanders
about how that other son is doing
whom found out, look, my dad
is that smiling soldier... I think it's more appealing to me, because it's writen from a pictures - and after all, luckely, that's the only way I know this war. From pictures, from stories, from movies...
And it might not be about the strike, it's more about the raid that (partly) caused it. Or maybe even more about that question that is always in the back of my mind: what side would you (your family) have choosen? And how would you live with it after you were "free"...
Maybe it is the fact that I can't grasp the fact that normal people (Dutch), during a foreign occupation (Nazi's), could let it happen that a group of people (Jews) were secluded from society, bullied openly and transported away to an unkown but probably terrible destination. I guess fear is a big part of it.
And this strike was an outcry against it. This was a way to try to stop it. I couldn't find a pamphlet from those days, so I can't tell you exactly what the strikers demanded. It's quite complicated and there are many factors that led to this day.
What I wanted to share here, is a poem that always reminds me of this happening. It's not the poem that is most often related to it and was written by Jan Campert, called (the song of) the 18 dead
Spoiler:
The writer himself wasn't one of the 18 man that were in danger of being executed (15 of the 18 indeed got that fate), despite the perspective of the poem. He did join the resistance, or at least acted against the occupators, got arrested and died in a concentrationcamp. He's a bit of an disputed hero over here, as it turned out later the camp got the worst of him.
Sorry, drifting away from the subject again: the poem I think about goes like this (sorry for the bad translation... I can't get the rhyme of the original in it)
A picture
Spoiler:
Jonas Daniël Meijerplein
where the German soldiers
are harassing jews
A scared man, with neat shoes
a long jacket and bow tie
is driven across the square
like it is a cattle market
Look, 3 German soldiers stand there
looking at it with a jeering laugh
And a fourth German, he looks aside,
maybe he's (nonetheless) ashamed
Just imagine, you looked at that picture
of that man in his bow tie
and you'd suddenly realise
He was your own father!
Sometimes my mind also wanders
about how that other son is doing
whom found out, look, my dad
is that smiling soldier...
Spoiler:
And it might not be about the strike, it's more about the raid that (partly) caused it. Or maybe even more about that question that is always in the back of my mind: what side would you (your family) have choosen? And how would you live with it after you were "free"...
Total Comments 3
Comments
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thanks for posting all of this its, i like to read up about these things as well and i wonder too...Posted 02-26-2009 at 02:29 PM by angelstar
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Thanks for posting this SFM - very interesting and unbelievably tragic. It's prompted me to find out more about this
Posted 02-26-2009 at 06:18 PM by sasquatch -
Here are two of the original pamphlets (see also this site, mostly in Dutch but partly in English):
Spoiler:Posted 02-26-2009 at 11:13 PM by Helanren
