Today the Dutch, that’s me (among others=, celebrate our liberation. For five years we were ruled and oppressed by the Nazis. Many Dutch, Jews and non-Jews alike, were murdered by the Germans; those who dared to resist were often tortured until they ratted out other members of the resistance and, after that, they were killed, executed. In 1945 the suffering ended: the allied forces, especially the Canadians, the Brits and the Americans liberated the Netherlands, they came in with tanks, they flew over with airplanes, they handed out candy, especially chocolate, they were welcomed with flowers and joy by a population almost starved. The last couple of months before the liberation were the most difficult months of the occupation: the Germans deliberately let the Dutch starve. There was virtually no food; many Dutch walked for days, literally days, to find enough food to survive for a couple of days more. Women walked for a week, falling down, getting up again, begging to farmers to give some food, anything, after that they would go home again where their husbands (if not taken away by the Nazis) were waiting with their children. The way home was perhaps even more difficult: the Germans could just take away the food the women had so much difficulty to find. Quite often they did and, in such cases, time and especially important energy we wasted making it more difficult if not impossible to survive.
While my people were starving, the brave American, Canadian and British forces were fighting and dying in Europe, mostly France of course, in an attempt to stop before-mentioned suffering as soon as possible. They died en masse but kept on fighting, to liberate people they never saw before. For this they, the generation of normal men who became heroes, deserve our eternal gratitude. To them, and to their sons and daughters I say, for the entire Dutch people, ‘thank you. We can never repay what you did for us, we can never do what you did for us; what you did, what you were willing to do for us is beyond words. All of you are heroes. May God bless you.’
Cross posted at my own blog.
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