For hundreds of thousands of people, the old elephant stable at the Noorder Zoo has always been a stable. It was a safe place for eighteen people in hiding during the Second World War. Young actors from Garage TDI will now tell this story to the audience.
Hay bales are stacked in the old elephant stable of the Rensen Park. It smells like straw and it is cold. Young people practice here between the beams and old graffiti-sprayed walls for a special performance. Eighteen people in hiding were hidden here during the Second World War. Now Felien Venema (12) and Femke Stam (18) are bringing that story to life again.
“I didn’t know at first that there were people in hiding in the Noorder Zoo,” Felien admits. “But I like that I know this now and can tell others who might not know.”
She responds together with other young people from the region Among the wild animalsa performance by Garage TDI in the context of Theater Na de Dam. This is a national project in which young people make performances about stories from the Second World War. On May 4, these performances will be played simultaneously throughout the Netherlands, immediately after National Remembrance Day.
The shelter from that time has been recreated between the hay bales. During rehearsals, a whispered sentence from the performance sounds through the stable: “You must keep a secret, you cannot tell a secret. You must not betray it, you must not reveal it, because that is how a secret works. A secret can survive.”
The story behind the performance takes place in 1943. Young men were then called up by the German occupier to work in Germany for the Arbeitseinsatz (the use of prisoners for forced labor, ed.), which was hard work. Many boys went into hiding to escape that.
Resistance members also had to hide. Eighteen people in hiding found a secret hiding place in the Noorder Zoo. Among the people in hiding was also a young Jewish woman, who was temporarily hidden there.
They slept above the elephants, lions and tigers, in a hayloft in the old zoo. During the day, some helped in the park, while German soldiers sometimes simply walked through the zoo, without suspecting anything. Even the highest German commander in the Netherlands, General Christiansen, came to Emmen.
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