Act of Remembrance, Dutch style

Kees Traas began his tribute to his WWII liberators with this Canadian military helmet.

It all began with a barn loft full of relics. As a boy growing up in the Scheldt River estuary of the Netherlands, Kees Traas heard stories about the soldiers who’d liberated his country in the Second World War. But it wasn’t until the 1960s, when he was a teenager exploring his uncle’s workshop that he learned his liberators were from Canada and worth celebrating.

“The 30th of October, 1944, our community was liberated by the Canadians,” Traas (now 58) told me this Liberation Week in the Netherlands. “My uncle saved war artifacts. So, as kids we played with them, and he gave me a Canadian helmet. That was the beginning. (more…)

Citizen duty

MEIN_KAMPF_EHe felt compelled to act. He could not hold his tongue. He sensed that if he didn’t step in and say something, all the evils of the past might be repeated. That’s why during a neo-Nazi meeting in the Netherlands about 1960, Heiman de Leeuw demanded entry to the meeting as well as a voice to express his concern.

“You don’t deserve to be living in this country,” he told the supporters of fascism assembled in the hall. “I refuse to keep silent.” (more…)