In the German troops bunker 502 from 1942 on the grounds of the EuroParcs bungalow park in Dordrecht, the war, that is, the Second World War, is far away and close at the same time. Everyday life goes on. On the menu for the twenty men is – it was to be expected – sauerkraut† The cook has written it on a sign.
The table has already been set for the soldiers who guard and, if necessary, defend the adjacent rivers Hollandsch Diep and Dordtsche Kil and the strategically important Moerdijk Bridge. The service is from the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe. For the entertainment there are magazines for the troops, Signal and The Wehrmacht among other. The air is stuffy.
A machine gun (MP 40) is ready for use. A warning sign, ‘Achtung, Feind hört mit† Another, ‘Eintritt Forbidden!† gas masks. A telephone exchange. British. A flag with a swastika. A periscope to explore the area and spot the enemy. A barrel with drink washer†
Dolls, dressed as German soldiers and in between them at a certain moment a 34-year-old ICT specialist from Dordrecht who has been committed to imitating reality in the 502 for years. Arnold Leevenson has put on a jacket from the German Wehrmacht for the photo of Lars van den Brink. He poses relaxed between the soldiers. It looks natural.
The bunker is a small museum, a diorama in which one aspect of life in WWII is depicted in detail. That is exactly what Van den Brink hit on. His crucial question: is it possible to depict the war and imitate reality including the horrors in a diorama?
His answer, a little skeptical: in part. Because an impression is only an impression, you have to have been in the bunker at the time to know how it went; to smell the stench of twenty soldiers huddled together and to feel their fear – the Allied bombers flew back and forth. After which Van den Brink resolved to playfully disrupt the image by posting a contemporary passer-by in the decor.
tangible reminder
He got the idea through a meeting with Erik Somers, a historian from the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Niod). Somers investigated how Dutch museums shape the history of the Second World War, including the historical military aspects.
In 2014 he obtained his doctorate at the University of Amsterdam with the dissertation The War in the Museum – Memory and Imagination† The trend, according to him: for the convenience of younger generations, memories are increasingly made tangible, such as in the small bunker museum on the EuroParcs site in Dordrecht, a stone’s throw from the A16 between Rotterdam and Hazeldonk.
The (incredibly ugly) key word: ‘authenticity experience’. Fantasy is not enough. The past must be felt and the public demands ‘authenticity’ in the form of authentic objects in a historical setting, Somers concluded.
That task has been fully entrusted to Arnold Leevenson and another collector/volunteer of the Dordrecht bunker museum, Nick Vermaat (65). Together with kindred spirits, they dug out the bunker, after long discussions with the municipality of Dordrecht, they managed to establish a museum and collected countless objects of German origin, via eBay and thanks to gifts and accidental finds.
That’s how it was then, they say in their bunker, for 95 percent. To avoid possible misunderstandings: there is no trace of admiration for the occupier. The men only want to bring history to life and tell this one story of the war, inspired in part by a Jewish grandmother (Leevenson) and a grandfather in the resistance (Vermaat).
They are not the only ones: 40 percent of the more than eighty Dutch war museums were only established after 2000. The total number of visitors has doubled since 1995. The war is still popular, even after all this time.
In Dordrecht the war has become an innocent, one-dimensional diorama. So it was in 1942-1945 in the German crew bunker 502, and at the same time not at all.
