Laurà Gerards is seven as four armed Moluccan men penetrate her school into top -mild and next to her 104 students and 5 teachers hostage. An event that, according to this week, research shows, still leaves deep traces among the affectors and their loved ones. It was also a traumatic experience for Gerards, but as the head of a primary school she also knows how to draw strength from the event.
“With me it was a hostage, but today’s children also get things for them. As a school I want to take the lead and be there for them. We have to talk about difficult things. Children will not do that on their own.”
Gerards just lived in Bovensmilde for two years when the hostage campaign took place. “Someone came in in a costume. With Sinterklaas, someone had also entered a costume and we had had a nice show in the auditorium, so I thought” yes, something is going to happen “. Then I saw my teacher’s face and whether it was panic or fear, I don’t know, but I knew; this is wrong.”
Tensions had been hung for some time between some Moluccan groups and the Dutch government. After the soldiers of the Royal Dutch-Indian Army had temporarily came to the Netherlands on service order in 1949, she was promised her own state on return. A promise that the Dutch state never fulfilled. Instead, the KNIL soldiers lived for years with their families in barracks and residential areas such as Schattenberg at former Westerbork camp and was wiped off the track.
On May 23, 1977, a group of young Moluccans decided to perform the pressure. At De Punt, a passenger train was hijacked with fatal outcome. At the same time, four Moluccans proceeded to the big hostage campaign in Bovensmilde. For four days, the more than one hundred children and five teachers were held.
Laurà Gerards was also allowed to leave the school after four days; Four teachers were left behind. “A lot of children had fallen ill. I also got sick and had to go to the toilet. And when I got rid of it, I felt as weak as a dishcloth. Then I saw the headmaster and that the door was open. I really didn’t feel well and pulled his jacket. He looked aside and said,” This child must also come along. “”
All students were taken to a church for a health check. The doctor decided that Laurà had to go to the hospital. “My parents were also in that church.”
The hostage of the remaining teachers went on for another two weeks. “I was allowed to go back home. That was very surreal, because you didn’t have been there for a long time. And one morning there was a deafening noise, we heard shots and I know that my father was looking out of the windows very quickly and soldiers were in the garden in front of our house. And my mother screamed.”
Whereas after the school host of support the teachers were told, it was told to the students that they should see it as a ‘kind of failed school trip’. There was no victim assistance in the 1970s and the knowledge and expertise about trauma processing was missing. Especially when it comes to trauma of children, it was often thought too lightly. As a result, a quarter of the participants of the study, who at the time were as a student at school, appear to be struggling with forms of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).
“The trauma will never go completely away,” says Gerards. “But the grief does not press me daily. For others it can be very different.” She thinks it is good that the report entitled ‘The silence afterwards’ has been delivered. “In particular because of the diversity that sounds in it. Every human life changes differently. You are dependent on several factors such as your environment, the support of your loved ones but also on what you experience further in your life. I think everyone sees the great care of the researchers.”
The conclusion that she can mainly agree with is that there is not enough recognition of central government, the media and society. “I think there are many aspects in history. Many overlapping aspects that Idereen share, but also individual aspects that are sometimes ignored,” says Gerards. “In the situation in Bovensmilde there are many aspects that get no attention at all.”
She points out that on the first day of the hostage -taking, Moluccan children were kept imprisoned. “They have also experienced the seriousness of the situation in a nasty way.”
She also points to the various initiatives that have been set in motion in Bovensmilde in recent years. This group has decided that she no longer wanted to be a victim and has broken the silence. “At first that was the school of Bovensmilde, something of former students, but now that has been transferred to Brink Baru that also contains people from the Moluccan community. It is a broadly mixed company.”
The research shows that more than ninety percent of the respondents do not cherish a resort compared to the Moluccan community. “Some indicate that the school horror not only has perpetrators and victims, but two misunderstood communities. This does not alter the fact that many hostages to be hostage of young children,” the researchers say.
Gerards endorses that conclusion. “I don’t have a resort. They were four young boys, you can’t keep a whole community responsible for that.”
In the meantime, she is now working daily at a school. She also wrote a book about the hostage from multiple perspectives. “I want to put the safety at school first. I take that from my experience.”