Residents, police, soldiers and emergency workers, many others no longer entered the village of Wijster at the beginning of December 1975. Police and soldiers then closed off the area around a hijacked train near Wijster. The village thus turned into a kind of fortress.
On December 2, 1975, seven young Moluccan men from Bovensmilde stopped a train near Wijster and took the occupants of one of the compartments hostage. Now fifty years later, little in the area anymore reminds us of that world news.
The third episode of the RTV Drenthe podcast The forgotten train hijacking takes us to the village. To residents who witnessed the hijacking up close, but also to aid workers who camped in and around Wijster for days during the train hijacking.
One of them is former police officer Wim Keizer from Bedum. He was summoned together with colleagues in Groningen to go to Wijster. “I was in the field as a riot police officer for the first three days and then I went to the communications. We quickly realized that they were Moluccans. The number of people who were being held hostage and the like was unclear for a long time.”
Several occupants of the train were killed during the train hijacking. On the first day, engineer Hans Braam and soldier Leo Bulter were shot dead. A third death followed on the third day: passenger Bert Bierling. For the then 25-year-old Wim Keizer, that was the most intense moment in his long police career.
“I was lying in the field with my colleague, he had binoculars at the time. The driver and a soldier had already been shot dead, but there was also a threat that they would shoot others. We looked at the train, then we both saw that one of the hostages was shot dead. My colleague up close with the binoculars, I a little further away.”
Listen to the third episode of The Forgotten Train Hijacking below. The article then continues: