The Reformed Church of Zandvoort will adjust the story that Jews have been hiding in the ridge of the building. It has always been said during guided tours that six to seven Jews were kept hidden for six months during the Second World War. After a report by NH News at the beginning of this month, there appears to be no evidence. The volunteer guides who give the tours continue to tell the ‘history’, but add that they are not sure whether the story is true.
The fact that the volunteers told the story despite a lack of evidence was met with incomprehension from Paul Olieslagers of the Jewish Monument Foundation and the Old Zandvoort Society. Intensive research has been done for a memorial in memory of more than three hundred Jews deported to concentration camps. The research did not reveal that six or seven of them would have been hiding in the attic of the church during the first years of the war.
clarification
The church has never answered an email in which Olieslagers asks for clarification. However, the church has now decided to adjust the story. Olieslagers wonders what the value of that commitment is.’ Olieslagers: “Not responding to a personal e-mail and then announcing that the tours are being adjusted gives me a slightly strange feeling.”
In the ridge
Teun Vastenhou, one of the volunteer guides, says he still has no reason to doubt the correctness of the story of the Jewish people in hiding. He heard the story about ten years ago from two Zandvoorts he thinks highly of. Those men are now deceased.
Nothing on paper
There is nothing on paper, next of kin have never come forward and no traces have been found of the presence of people in hiding. If participants in the tour still want to see the place where the people in hiding would have been, in the ridge of the cellar, Vastenhouw will show them. “And so I’ll add from now on that there’s no evidence for it.”