At the MH17 monument in Hilversum, the fifteen Hilversum victims of the plane crash were commemorated this afternoon. Former mayor Pieter Broertjes read out the names of the fifteen victims. About a hundred relatives and interested parties attended the memorial service. Pastor Jules Dresmé has kept in close contact with the relatives since the plane crash eight years ago. “The fact that so many people come every year is a sign of the great impact.”
Pastor Dresmé was again present at the commemoration of the MH17 disaster this year. He notices that many people still come to the memorial service. “Of course family members, but also colleagues, fellow students and football buddies of the victims. After all these years, it is still a vivid memory.”
The pastor experiences the commemorations as a warm gathering. “Of course because it is in the summer, but also especially because everyone comes together to commemorate loved ones. There is a very involved atmosphere, but there is also dejection.”
sunflowers
According to the cleric, the impact is still very large. This is also visible in the environment. Sunflowers can also be seen on several roundabouts in Hilversum. MH17 was shot down in 2014 and crashed into a sunflower field. The monument in Hilversum therefore consists of fifteen bronze sunflowers, which symbolize the Hilversum victims.
“It is a beautiful monument. There are always people and there are always flowers,” Dresmé notes. “And it is still very much alive, because people are missed. Young people miss their buddies and students miss their fellow students.”
read names
According to Dresmé, reading the names of the victims is especially important for the next of kin. “It’s an old saying: as long as your name is mentioned, you stay alive. So by reading the names, the memory is kept alive.” At the commemoration at the National Monument MH17 in Vijfhuizen, the names of all 298 victims were mentioned.
In his own speech, Pastor Dresmé emphasized today that the downing of MH17 made it clear for the first time that a war was going on in eastern Ukraine. “In fact, they were the first group of foreign civilian victims,” he says after the memorial. “At that time, we had never heard of the Donbas. The fact that the war in Ukraine has now really broken out and there are daily casualties brings the memories very close again.”
Contact with relatives
To this day, Dresmé is in contact with various relatives of the MH17 disaster. “Those contacts have always remained. We have spent a lot of time together. The grief is just very great, a normal person cannot handle that alone. After the commemoration we always come together again to talk about it.”