For a long time, Erna Oosterveen from the neighborhood was ashamed of her last name and family history. Grandpa and grandma were members of the NSB and that is the whole family. Now Oosterveen mainly tries to understand the choices of her grandparents. “In a certain way I embraced my grandfather and grandmother.”
When Erna Oosterveen was about eight years old, she heard in the schoolyard that her grandfather and grandmother were ‘wrong’ in the Second World War. “I came home from school and wanted to know right away: what about?” She says in the Radio Drenthe program Cassata. “Grandpa and grandma Oosterveen chose the NSB because they were poor,” she was told. “And poor people did that.”
She did not find out much more in her youth. The now 59-year-old Erna Oosterveen remembers that her father was bothered by the choices of his parents. He was very disappointed when there was another story in the newspaper about the events in 1943. Then Hendrik Oosterveen, Grandpa, was shot in his doorway by two resistance boys from Staphorst. “My father was home with his two sisters, they were the three youngest children,” says Erna Oosterveen.
“We could hardly talk about it at home, it was a vulnerable subject,” she says. “My father tried to live by all his life. He did very well, he has shown a lot of resilience.” That is why she did not ask for the past.
But Oosterveen was curious. The archive of the Meppeler Courant created more brightness. “I recently invented most of them in the National Archives about twenty years ago. Then I looked at the files of my grandfather and grandmother with my brother. Because we wanted to know: what about it really?”
She got a picture of grandfather, but also from grandma. She was convicted after the war for her membership of the NSB and because she was active for Frontzorg. “She made packages for the Dutch boys who fought for the SS in the east.”
The fight against the Russians seems to have kept Oosterveen busy. One of her sons fought against the Russians in Latvia and died there. “My grandmother seems to have said:” If I was a man, I also went to the Eastern Front. “The fear of the Russians was very great.” Oosterveen thinks that communism was the basis of it. They may have been afraid that they would lose all their possession.
The choices of her grandparents became a burden for Oosterveen. “I felt very guilty and responsible. Guilty because I was a member of a wrong family. I belonged to family who apparently had done things in the war that were very wrong,” she says. “I couldn’t be proud of that last name.”
She found out that she was not the only one struggling with the past. She learned about psychological complaints, depression and the feeling of exclusion. She also heard how someone was confronted with it during a discussion in the pub. “You have to keep your mouth shut because we know what your family was,” Oosterveen repeats such a reproach. “You carry it with you in one way or another.”
She thinks it is important that the subject becomes negotiable. “There are many who have to live with such a history in Drenthe. It is important to hear that they are not alone. We have to talk about it. About good and wrong choices. And it’s not about it Judgment, but for the question: what happened? “
It is not always easy to raise family history. But Oosterveen is the example that it can turn out positively. “It actually relieves me. Because I read that my grandfather had no blood on his hands. People stated that he knew that there were people in hiding, but he did not betray them. At the same time I can’t my grandfather Free, because he was a member of the NSB and was a fanatic man. “
She feels better by knowing the context in which the choices are made. “I now feel lighter because I have studied it and I have embraced my grandfather and grandmother in a certain way.”