Yesterday I went on a school trip with the boys class. The museum was rented for 3 hours and the kids were on a assignment which will be on their agenda for the next month. Where do we have war, is there war in countries they went to, what do they know about war, where are the Dutch preventing war or do we have military taking part in a war somewhere in the world.
A great thing to have these 8-9-10 year old kids talking and thinking about war in the past and war these days in countries really near. So we went to the museum ROTTERDAM 1940-1945 NOW and I was driving 4 kids to the museum and we were allowed to go with them and see the exhibition aswell. I took 4 hours from work and decided to work late last night, to go with my child. I had a great morning and learned a lot.
This is us in the car and infront of the museum. We were invited by a sweet lady who was a volunteer storyteller, that had the stories from her dad. For the record my mum and dad weren’t born then so I knew what I knew untill yesterday from the stories my granddad told us while we were growing up.
The bombing of Rotterdam was more than three quarters of a century ago, but is still reverberating in our city. The Experience in Museum Rotterdam 40 - '45 NOW puts you in the middle of Rotterdam in May 1940 with personal stories, penetrating images and overwhelming sound. How does it feel when your life is turned upside down and your familiar surroundings are shattered? Again I have to say , some things I saw mad me very sad.
The location is at the waterside at the Coolhaven, you can get there by subway or car. The experience what it means when your city is bombed is made real. I found myself in war sound environment. I was intrigued by the guns and the clothes. What will your life look like if you are then persecuted and oppressed, and on the verge of losing everything. The yellow stars had me sickened, even than racial difference was made and I am saddened. My Rotterdam was bombed and all that was left was the Laurenskerk, I blogged about that beauty many times. Experience was made so real that back at work that afternoon my mind wondered of many times to the things I had seen this morning.
An important part of the visit is the penetrating experience. You take place at an eight-meter-long touchscreen table. And before you know it, it's May 14, 1940. Bombs are falling, the city is burning, people are shouting, buildings are collapsing and houses are destroyed. And then suddenly there is nothing left. A desolate bare city. Yet this is not the end of the city. The Rotterdammers picked up daily life together again and reconstruction of our beloved buildings is a fact. In this short film you experience the war up close and you see what made the city of Rotterdam so different from most cities in the Netherlands. The sound you can here in the video and the link I made and put in the blog. I shot it while the kids were watching the bombing movie.
Almost all objects from the war collection are displayed in a 28-meter-long display gallery. I walked along the displays and looked at everything with much interest. I got the museum borrow iPad with the stories behind the objects. Every display with number corresponded with the explanation in the iPad
Here you see the yellow is the cabinet. The display correspondents with the object and the origin.
There are weapons and uniforms on display, but also everyday objects of which you cannot understand why. There are often special stories behind those sometimes ordinary things. Such as the porcelain clogs from Mrs. Smit, received at the fair from her first boyfriend. Or the tin and wood train for Gerhard, made by his father when they were in hiding. Objects and stories. Part of our history together. A history that will only be preserved if we keep telling the stories. A history that will be told in these educational class visits. And I think that’s great. For school this is the start, the kids will also learn about the wars still going on now in the twentieth century.
The kids had to search for 5 objects in all the displays.
They had to draw one object of choice ( I saw many boys draw a gun )
I will leave you with the video I made, while the movie of the actual bombing was going on in a movie shown to the kids, so it’s a noisy video but needed.
I had a great day, and this is something that I think that is needed to tell all the kids in the primary school, for you that Don’t know about the war in Rotterdam
The bombing of Rotterdam was carried out by German bombers on 14 May 1940 between 13:27 and approximately 13:40 hours as part of the German military raid on the Netherlands. The fifteen-minute bombing destroyed almost the entire historic city center of Rotterdam, partly due to the fires that started. An estimated 650 to 900 people died, and about 80,000 residents were left homeless. The bombing was the reaction of the German invaders to the resistance of the Dutch troops (especially at the Afsluitdijk, on the Grebbeberg and on the Moerdijk bridges), which delayed the German advance. The Germans had planned a rapid advance through the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg in the campaign against France. The bombardment led to the surrender of Rotterdam the same day and under the threat that other cities would also be bombed, starting with Utrecht, until the surrender of the Netherlands on May 15, 1940. The bomb shower, which fell early in the afternoon, only lasted fifteen minutes, but the devastating effect, partly due to the fires that started, was gigantic. More than 24,000 homes were reduced to ashes, 32 churches and 2 synagogues were destroyed. About 650-900 people were killed and 80,000 Rotterdammers were made homeless. When the next day the Germans threatened to flatten Utrecht in the same way, this was reason enough for the capitulation, signed on May 15, 1940 by General Winkelman (source: Wikipedia)
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Blog Date : 10 September 2020