Everyone was silent about ‘the forgotten disaster’ of Groningen, who still evokes many emotions after 75 years

In the burning sun, Klaas van der Molen stands for hundreds of people in Groningen on Tuesday afternoon. He is going to tell about his brother, who died in an accident 75 years ago. But already when his own first names ‘Klaas Willem’, he becomes emotional. Willem was the name of his brother, who died seven years before Klaas was born. His parents named him after their deceased son. “I didn’t experience it at all, but again,” says Van der Molen.

On Saturday, August 12, 1950, six children were killed in an accident in the Groningen Oranjewijk. They played at the vegetable auction, when a train hit the fence of the building. A newly brushed wall collapsed and fell on them. Six children were seriously injured, six others did not survive. They were four to fourteen years old. All curtains in the neighborhood closed for a week. After that, it was no longer talking about it.

Afsaneh Moghadam received an email about this ‘forgotten disaster’ a year ago. She has been a social worker in Groningen for 25 years, but she had never heard of what had happened in the Oranjewijk all those years ago.

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Call

A resident of the neighborhood asked Moghadam in the mail last summer whether they wanted to pay attention to the accident. Moghadam decided to collect information and distributed a letter in the neighborhood. “He not only reached the neighborhood. Residents sent the letter to former residents who now live in other places,” says Moghadam.

She was looking for people who experienced the accident and lost brothers and sisters and recorded their story. “It was as if a volcano erupted from emotions,” says Moghadam. “A lot of pain came up, but also relief that they could finally tell their story. Many people never talked about it. An eyewitness has only written a letter to his daughter about what happened.”

Together with the neighborhood association and the municipality of Groningen, Moghadam made the brochure ‘a stagnant street’ containing the stories of relatives and survivors. They tell what the time after the accident was and what the impact was on their lives. For example, a woman who lost two brothers tells her family to ‘exceptionally heavily hit at the disaster. My older brother Klaas and my twin brother Reini died and I was seriously injured in the hospital. The disaster will certainly have had an influence on my parents. But at that time it was not talked about and certainly not with your own small children. The head must be! You had to continue! ”

I haven’t experienced the accident at all, but again it

Jan, friend and classmate of Gjalt van der Meulen (83), was also killed. “His place remained empty in the classroom and there was no further talk about it,” says Van der Meulen in the brochure. At that time, pain and sorrow did not talk, Moghadam says. There was no help either. “A social worker did not yet exist. After the accident, the curtains closed. From solidarity, all the neighbors did that. Behind closed doors there was a struggling. Nobody spoke about it then, but the impact was great. A brother of one of the killed children told me that his father went to the cemetery every day.”

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Flowers

Many current residents did not know what had happened in their neighborhood, but are now involved in the commemoration and the unveiling of the monument. “Now I know why there are sometimes flowers in that place, a resident said,” says Moghadam.

75 years after the disaster there is now a monument, with a poem by city poet of Groningen Esmé van den Boom. Survivors speak during the commemoration. For example, Klaas van der Molen explains what the impact of the loss of their son Willem was on his parents. “I came into the world in 1957. I was the only child and ended up in a cage. I was not allowed to do anything. I had no bad parents, not at all. But I could not develop myself. That makes this day a bit emotional. I think it is very nice that a monument has come here.”

After the accident, the curtains closed

Hilda Hoeksema (80) was five years old during the accident and survived, but had bone fractures and a concussion. Then, during her admission to a repair resort, her twin brother Appie drowned. On the advice of the doctors, her parents only told that after she came home from the Oord. During the commemoration she talks about the consequences of the injury on her life. “It took over a year and a half before my body had recovered. My learning ability was affected. I was ashamed.”

During the commemoration it is a minute for the first time in 75 years for the killed children. It does the relatives, eyewitnesses and survivors well. “This memorial offers me strength and comfort and I hope that whoever this happened to have happened to be the same,” says Hoeksema. “This should not be forgotten again.”

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