As every year, Hans Koevoet from Eindhoven will be picking up another set of boxes this May 4th. It contains piles of diaries and documents from his father Ko, who was employed in Berlin during the Second World War. And now that Hans himself is getting older, he thinks it is high time that the special collection ended up in a museum. “Time is running out a bit.”
Hans tells with pride about his father. “When the war started, he was a smart guy in his twenties. He was busy becoming an engineer.” This also did not go unnoticed in the rest of Voorschoten, the village in South Holland where he lived. “The mayor there turned out to be an NSB member. He tipped him and a few other boys to the Germans as handy workers.”
And so it happened that in 1943 Ko was sent to Berlin. “There he had to work in an aircraft factory. He stayed there until the end of the war.”
“I really couldn’t make anything out of that handwriting.”
When Hans’ father returned to the Netherlands on 8 April 1945, he did not do so empty-handed. “During that period he kept diaries there. In them he wrote, for example, how he regularly spoke with a German family that was against the war. And how he first heard about the gassings of the Jews.”
Still, it took a while before Hans could actually read those stories. “He wrote everything in those very chic, slanted letters. Now I resemble my father in some respects, but I really couldn’t make anything of that handwriting.”
Because Hans was curious about his father’s experiences, he had the texts deciphered, digitized and put on a CD by someone a few years ago. “My big dream now is that it will be printed in a book again. As a tribute.”
And Hans’s ambitions don’t stop there. “My father also took piles of papers with him. From personal identification cards, to newspapers and some kind of food stamps. You should really look at it all up close to see how special that is. That’s why I want it on display.”
“Around this time, those stories about the war always come back.”
Hans himself will soon be 68 years old. “My father died at 75. So somehow it feels like time is running out.” That feeling is only stronger on a day like May 4. “My father was always very open about the war. Those stories always come back around this time. It would be nice if others could see that too.”
