The table in the building of the Oud Meppel Foundation is full of yellowed paper. Documents with sensitive information from the Second World War. It is the archive of office owner Jan Poortman, resistance fighter from Meppel and Spil of the intelligence service in occupied territory.
“These are small pictures of Hoofdplaat (Dorp in Zeeland, ed.) And surroundings,” points out Wim de Vries. De Vries is chairman of Oud Meppel and proud of this collection. “Each district had an office holder, a central figure where information came together to be further distributed from there. And Meppel is special because for a year the information from all over the Netherlands came here to be photographed, the films went to London.”
From colored floor plans from places in Zeeland to detailed descriptions of the construction of Havelte airport. All kinds of information is about the table. Special, because Poortman kept a lot of original information after he had photographed it. As a result, Meppel together with the NIOD in Amsterdam is the only place where this kind of information is available.