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Europe Remembers on Tour!
in Overijssel, Gelderland and Drenthe
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After a forced break, Europe Remembers on Tour! was back on the road in the Netherlands, in the province of Overijssel, Gelderland and Drenthe. On our first day, in Overijssel, we visited the Memory Vrijheidsmuseum in Nijverdal, the Canadian war cemetery and information centre in Holten and many sites that relate to Operation Cannonshot, the Canadian crossing of the river IJssel in April 1945, which was a big step towards the liberation of the north of the Netherlands.
On the following day, we went to Gelderland and visited a historic location as Hotel de Wereld in Wageningen, where the capitulation of the German forces in the Netherlands was signed on 5 May 1945. We also visited Museum de Casteelse Poort before going to Apeldoorn and taking a look at many WWII sites there, including the Memorial centre Apeldoornse Bosch, a Jewish psychiatric institution that was rounded up in 1943: all 1300 patients and staff were sent to Auschwitz and never returned. After a visit to the Loenen Field of Honour, we interviewed the Mayor of Apeldoorn.
On our last day, we travelled north, to Drenthe. There, we visited the impressive Kamp Westerbork, a transit camp for Dutch Jews, Sinti, Roma, resistance combatants and political adversaries before their transfer to extermination camps. Later on, we rode an amazing Willys Jeep and we visited many key locations of Operation Amherst - the dropping of paratroopers from the 2nd and 3rd regiment SAS on 7 April 1945 - and even some LRE audiospots in the province.
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Europe Remembers on Tour! will be back very soon with more interesting videos. Stay tuned on our social media accounts and don’t miss our visit to Buchenwald, Auschwitz and Mittelbau-Dora concentration camps, along with the city of Krakow.
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A new LRE audiospot in Drenthe
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A new LRE audiospot was recently unveiled at the station in Meppel, in the province of Drenthe, the Netherlands.
The plaque on the stone depicts a sad event that took place on April 8, 1945. A freight train with a few passenger wagons containing German leave-goers and slightly wounded soldiers was waiting at the Meppel station for departure to Germany. The Royal Air Force discovered the stationary train and shelled and bombed the long line of wagons. The result was twenty dead, many injured and enormous damage to the station and to the surrounding streets.
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“As a strategic and important pivot point in the occupation years, but especially in the last weeks of the liberation, Meppel had to be featured in the Liberation Route Europe”, says initiator Arjan Linthorst, who started this project two years ago together with Wim Sagel (4-5 May Committee Meppel). The official unveiling took place with Mayor Richard Korteland and Ritmeester der Cavalerie, Patric van Aalderen.
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LRE app no longer available
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Due to outdated libraries in the technologies used in the app and the upcoming renewal of the Liberation Route Europe’s digital environment, we decided to no longer support the Liberation Route Europe old mobile applications. They have been removed from the Apple and Android stores and are not available for download anymore. A brand new application will be launched in 2021.
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Fletcher Hotel Erica in Berg en Dal, the Netherlands, is not only a hotel in the middle of the woodlands with a restaurant and a pool, but also a very special place of remembrance.
After the bombing of nearby Nijmegen in February 1944, the hotel building hosted several people who had to flee from their homes. A few months later, the area was involved in Operation Market Garden and hundreds of Allied paratroopers landed in the area. In the cellar of the hotel, the refugees heard the noise of fighting and their refuge was first searched by the Allies, then by the Germans and then, once and for all, by the Americans. The story of Hotel Erica during Operation Market Garden is told by Ms Van Vliet, one of those refugees, in a LRE audiospot that is located under a lime tree in front of the hotel.
But this is not the only war story present: the family story of Marcel Hoogenboom, Hotel manager, complements the hotel story. Marcel’s grandfather, originally from Middelburg, Zeeland, was a member of a local resistance group and survived the infamous Oranjehotel in the Hague, Camp Amersfoort and Dachau concentration camp, but could not make it back to the Netherlands. Marcel’s promise to his late grandmother to keep the memory alive is what links the hotel with the decision to partner with Liberation Route Europe and to create a LRE audiospot.
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