Reverend Swets emerged as the figurehead of the residents. “Although he also knew that the expansion of Schiphol could no longer be stopped,” says Joustra. But he thought: if it has to be done, let it be done properly, so that the community continues to exist. “After all, that’s what you’re a pastor for.”
At first that seemed feasible. The municipality of Haarlemmermeer was working on the Rozenburg plan, a new village between Hoofddorp and Aalsmeer, with about seventy homes for the residents of Rijk.
A village that was in the way
But two years later the curtain still falls. “The Crown (the government, ed.) considers it undesirable for a residential area to be created a short distance from the three kilometer long new runways,” De Volkskrant reported on March 25, 1959. The booming noise of jet engines would make living impossible. This meant that the Rozenburg plan was scrapped for good.
Then the inevitable becomes final. The village must be empty by September 15, 1959 at the latest. “Then the bulldozers will push further,” the pastor says to De Gooi- en Eemlander. “And the Kingdom will be wiped out from the earth.”
Within a few months there will be nothing left of the village. The church, the primary school and the last houses disappear in front of the airport that was supposed to put the Netherlands on the map.
How a village rearranges itself
Just as in Moerdijk today, the disappearance of Rijk also led to misunderstanding and anger. Residents were convinced that their close-knit community could not simply be broken apart, that the trusted mutual ties would withstand any administrative intervention.
But things turned out differently. According to planner Joustra, it gradually became apparent that people, no matter how devoted to their village, were adapting to a new reality. “Ultimately, that tight-knit community survived in a sense, but people turned the switch and built a life somewhere else,” he says.
Most residents of Rijk moved to nearby Rijsenhout, where about 250 new houses and a brand new village hall were built for them. At its opening, the former residents of the Kingdom were officially welcomed warmly.
Joustra sees the same emotions arising for Moerdijk: first denial, then anger. “We saw those phases in Rijk, and later also in De Hoek,” he says. According to him, whether history repeats itself depends mainly on the way in which the municipality guides and compensates residents. This ultimately turned out to be beneficial in Rijk. “Ordinary residents received a few hundred thousand euros for their house. That removed a lot of uncertainty. Those people had never seen so much money together.”
“If it is handled properly, everything will work out,” Joustra concludes. “What’s left is a little nostalgia, but no resentment.”