“We can take a beating, but this was really scary”, adds Bruls’ wife Ilse. “We had to leave our house in a hurry from the police.” In the end, the case went off without a hitch. It remained quiet in Nijmegen on the day in question, November 28, partly due to a considerable police effort. Hubert and Ilse Bruls and their two daughters were able to return home safely at the end of the day.
oversimplified
Bruls (56) became one of the well-known faces of crisis management through his role as chairman of the Security Council, in which mayors of large cities hold consultations. He regularly had to explain corona measures. That was not always appreciated.
“It was bad to see how oversimplified people judged Hubert,” says his wife in the interview, which was conducted because he has been mayor of Nijmegen for ten years. “The swearing, the yelling, the fat shaming: they hurt. You are talking about my husband, about our father.”