Today at 08:00 • Updated today at 08:48
May 4 is National Remembrance Day. The victims of war, terror and oppression since the Second World War are also commemorated in Brabant villages and cities. This mainly happens at monuments, from Bergen op Zoom to Boxmeer, or in charged places with a gruesome history, such as the former Vught concentration camp. Omroep Brabant will be attending the annual commemoration there and will broadcast the meeting live on television and Brabant+ on Monday afternoon.
During the Second World War, more than 32,000 people were imprisoned in the Vught concentration camp, because they were Jewish, because they were in the resistance or for other reasons. 751 prisoners were murdered or died in the camp. The camp was open from January 1943 to early September 1944.
Nowadays it is a museum with an information center under the name National Monument Camp Vught. Every year on May 4, these events are commemorated on site.
Program
The commemoration will be opened on Monday afternoon at 2 p.m. by director Jeroen van den Eijnde. Then the floor is given to poet, performer and spoken-word artist Djé-Rimo, who grew up in Vught and has a Moluccan background.
The first main speaker is Chantal van Nijkerken-De Haan, the mayor of Vught. Her personal involvement in the Second World War will also be discussed in her speech.
Singer ‘Do’ from Valkenswaard then sings. Afterwards, three people present in the audience will briefly explain why they are at the commemoration.
Anna van Zoest then speaks. She is director of the Atlantic Commission. Her grandmother, Gisela Wieberdink-Söhnlein, saved Jewish children, but was arrested and imprisoned in Vught and later deported.
Flowers
Do then sings again, followed by the laying of wreaths and two minutes of silence, followed by a series of wreath laying and a short parade. This goes along the inside of the barbed wire fence and ends in a corner behind the crematorium.
There, visitors can place the sign they receive upon arrival with a portrait and name of one of the 751 victims of Camp Vught in the grass. Flowers are laid behind the crematorium, near the ‘ash pits’.
The ceremony can be followed live from 2 p.m. on Omroep Brabant Television and on Brabant+.
What is National Remembrance Day?
On May 4 at 8 p.m. there will be two minutes of silence. Trains and cars stop for a moment, flags hang at half-mast. At the monument on Dam Square in Amsterdam there is a national ceremony with the king. The bell ringing for dead resistance fighters on the Waalsdorpervlakte is also well known. There are meetings even in the smallest villages.
The oldest commemorations of the dead date back to August 1945 in Moerstraten and October 1945 in Waalre. The first national commemoration was in 1946. At that time it was only about the victims of the resistance. In the following years, the commemoration was expanded to include other victim groups, such as Jews, Roma and Sinti. From 1961 onwards, Dutch soldiers and civilians in the Dutch East Indies were also killed there.
The National Committee 4 and 5 May organizes the commemoration and explains on its own website who the commemoration is about.
‘During the National Remembrance Day we commemorate all – civilians and military personnel – who were killed or murdered in the Kingdom of the Netherlands or anywhere else in the world; both during the Second World War and the colonial war in Indonesia, as well as in war situations and peace operations afterwards. The Holocaust, war violence, terror and oppression have left deep marks on our society. All memories and emotions come together during the National Commemoration.’
In addition to the national May 4 commemoration, there are local commemorations of the dead every year in Brabant in the autumn. Most of the province was liberated in September, October and November 1944.
