Zoetermeers Mystery: This is why there are 3 golden stones in the city

For three houses in the Molenstraat and on the JL van Rijweg is a gold -colored stone with a text. The stones are sunk in the footpath and you could just walk by. Or about stumbling: they are so -called stumbling stones.

The stumbling stones also become Stolpersteine and have to do with the Second World War. They are memorial stones with a brass picture on top. In each picture the name is engraved from a victim of Nazism during the war. To keep the memory of three Zoetermeerse fighters alive, Mayor Michel Bezuijen placed the small memorials in March for their former houses.

Stones and streets

According to the municipality, all three of the Zoetermeerse resistance fighters died just before the end of the Second World War due to violence of the German occupier. In memory, the stumbling stone for resistance fighter Jan Hoorn is located in the Molenstraat for house number 120. For the then house at house number 147 is the memorial stone of Cornelis van Eerden. The third stumbling stone, by Jacobus Leendert van Rij, can be found on the JL van Rijweg. This way you immediately know where the Zoetermeerse street names Cornelis van Eerdenstraat, Jan Hoornstraat and JL van Rijweg come from.

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Honorary

The initiator of the memorial stone is the German artist Gunter Demnig. He speaks of Stolpersteine, because you ‘stumble’ in a figurative sense. With your ‘head and heart’ and because you have to stoop to read the text. The Drie Zoetermeerse resistance heroes Jan Hoorn, Cornelis van Eerden and Jacobus Leendert van Rij are buried in an honorary grave near the Oude Kerk.

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Not to be confused with plaquettes

Also in the Wilhelminapark have been Keitjes with texts for years. These are not stumbling stones, but plaques with thoughts of people who are designed as a work of art for the war memorial and the India monument. The Zoetermeer Yvon Grevers came up with the thought path: a work of art with statements from the elderly about war and peace.

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