Andy Swerissen is also part of that generation. Only flat the death of his father in 2023 did stories about the stroke above water. “His last days must have been hell for him. I didn’t get much of it in my younger years. We were in the Netherlands and had to adjust. That has signed me; Staying modest has taught me, but then the questions come.”
‘Let’s break the silence’
“I have not experienced the silence with which my parents grew up,” says Adelborst Maarten Swart in his speech. He is looking for a connection, “even though his answers is not always available or takes a lot of effort to find the right words.” Swart also calls on silence to break.
A silent hope from Karen Boelema Robert is that those questions about the war history in the Dutch East Indies and Japan are now coming from the ‘third generation’. “They have not experienced the silence of their grandparents so penetratingly, they do dare to ask questions. Our children do that too. That is the case if they do.”