You will also hear Irma Martens in this episode. Martens lives in Beilen as a 17-year-old and goes to school in Hoogeveen by train every day. Normally she is on the train early in the morning, but on that Tuesday morning in December 1975 she first has to go to the ophthalmologist in Assen. Back in Beilen she decides to drink a cup of coffee at home and put on dry clothes because it is raining. Catching a train later is no problem, she still thinks.
And so she too is suddenly on the disaster train. Just after Beilen, the loud hiss of the emergency brake is heard near Wijster. “I had never experienced that before,” she says. “‘This is a robbery.’ I didn’t understand it at all, I didn’t know at all what South Moluccans were.”
Martens undergoes it all as a young girl, but quickly realizes that something is wrong. “It was immediately shouted that someone was dead. I also thought several times that I would no longer see my father, mother, brother and sisters.” On the first day, two people die, and on Thursday a third man is shot dead.
The student is released on the tenth day. “We had just had a delicious, warm meal, carrots with fish. I remember that very clearly,” Martens remembers. Suddenly a Moluccan hijacker stands next to her with a flashlight. He says she is being released.
Text continues after the photos: