78 years after the Second World War, Annen will receive a memorial monument for six residents who died during or in the years after the war. It took a long time before the village was ready for such a monument. Annen’s history has a black border.
“Look, this is the photo of my uncle Roelie, my mom’s brother,” says Roelie Hendriks, pointing to an old black-and-white photo. Her uncle, Roelf ‘Roelie’ Reitsema, was called up in 1943 to work for the Nazis. “At a certain point he would go into hiding. That did not work out, he was betrayed by someone in the village,” says Hendriks.
Reitsema was in the Dutch army and, like other prisoners of war, had to work for the occupying forces. The Nazis sent him to the German city of Kassel, where he had to work in a munitions factory.
The inhabitant of Annen did not survive the war. Reitsema was killed in a bombing raid on 22 October 1943. “The Allies probably bombed the factory and he was there at the time,” Hendriks explains.
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