If Gerie Smit had not been invited to speak for the victims of a disco fire in Gothenburg this weekend, she might never have gone back to ‘t Hemeltje. Smit survived the New Year’s fire in Volendam. And she has known for years that her fellow villagers would rather not stir up the suffering of that time.
When Smit walks into the café for the first time in years, she pauses. She picks at the strap of her bag with her hands, nervously. Nothing has changed here, she says. The Volendam fire is almost here again 23 years ago, but in the bar time is frozen. As if Volendam has thrown a curtain over the past. Smit, a survivor himself, wonders out loud in the bar whether that should change? Shouldn’t ‘t Hemeltje be one? memorial site become?
The demand is high for Smit. Because she doesn’t want to talk in front of the rest of the fishing village. However, in recent weeks the issue has suddenly become topical. Smit, journalist at NH – wrote a book about the disaster, which claimed the lives of 14 young people. And she made a documentary about it. And that is why she was asked to speak on Sunday in Gothenburg, Sweden, which was also hit by a serious fire in a discotheque (63 deaths) two years before the Volendam café fire. The dance facility has now been renovated and painted. Very different from ‘t Hemeltje, which gives a desolate impression after all this time.
But is that the best way? Smith doesn’t know. She goes to Gothenburg together with Erik Tujip, the chairman of the Volendam New Year’s Fire Aftercare Foundation, and a representative of the municipality to discover whether they can learn something from the way in which they keep the memory of the fire alive in the Scandinavian country. Tuijp, who previously traveled to Gothenburg, will also speak there.
For the occasion, Smit visits ‘t Hemeltje. Long white coat, bag wrapped around the shoulders. If you look closely, you can see the traces of that night on her hands. Burns. Before we go in, she shows me the memorial on De Dijk. Blue tiles, from school children. “Mine is not among them,” she says. “I was sick that day.” She makes quotation marks in the air with her hands. “I didn’t want to think and worry about that night for a long time. I put it away for a long time.”
“Just write down that after twenty years I still find it difficult to talk about it. Crazy, isn’t it?”
‘t Hemeltje is located above a photo shop. The entrance door is hidden behind fishing nets in the corner. The main language in the store is German, and photos are taken in traditional costume. There used to be a café here, De Wirwar. And from that bar you could then go up a staircase to ‘t Hemeltje. A place where youth gathered to drink their first beers. On New Year’s Eve 2001, a fire tore apart the young lives of fourteen of them. The Christmas decorations on the ceiling caught fire.
Smit has only been there twice after that night. Just walking in now, on a drizzly afternoon in October, is strange, she says. “Just write down that after twenty years I still find it difficult to talk about it. Crazy, huh?”
Smit shows me around. Step by step we make a round around the bar. Just like before. “When I came in here, I wanted to see who was there.”
Nothing changed
In the center of the café is a huge, polygonal bar, with weathered mirrors with poinsettias painted on the walls. The ceilings are discolored by the fire, which raged through the room like a blowtorch. Melted billboards hang on the wall. The knowledge that fourteen victims fell in this room is almost unbelievable. “Nothing has really changed,” says Smit. “The mess has been cleaned up, the coats, the melted shoes. But other than that it is exactly as it was.”
Smit pauses at the back of the bar, where the fire started. She was standing barely five feet away, she was fifteen. “I was there for a kiss,” she says. “And at the time of the fire I was kissing.” The moments afterward are vague. She felt the fire, fell unconscious. And soon after, she found her way out after climbing over the bar. Smit points out the escape route with her hands.
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She was one of the first outside and barely realized how seriously she was injured. “You don’t feel third-degree burns,” she says matter-of-factly. She was then hospitalized for two months. She still remembers the drive to the hospital, the next day being January 21st. “I was kept in a coma for three weeks. I knew nothing, had a thousand questions. After that I almost died a few more times from bacterial infections. I’ve had every bug there is in my back.”
In ‘t Hemeltje she tells the story, her story. The story that keeps knocking. If only because you can see it in her body. And because she is a real Volendam, she hardly wants to talk about it in the first years after that New Year’s Eve. “What ‘t Hemeltje looks like now is actually an example of that. Time has stood still here. Really stood still. In my documentary ‘We don’t talk about that anymore’ that is also my quest. Why people don’t want to talk about it. I got that back really hard: that question was actually about myself.”
Commemoration in Gothenburg
And now that the 25th anniversary of the fire in Gothenburg is approaching, the question arises whether Volendam will ever become good at commemorating. And whether that is actually necessary. Should ‘t Hemeltje become a memorial site? Or should it be preserved forever – as property of the municipality – in a semi-derelict but original state? Smit doesn’t know, she can’t and won’t talk in front of her fellow villagers. But it is strange, now that she suddenly makes a tour around the bar again. Just like before.
In Sweden the disco has become a memorial space. Stripped and refurbished. The stories of the victims are told there. Sunday’s commemoration is the last. Afterwards the place remains accessible. Anyone can go there anytime, if they want.
When Smit speaks there on Sunday, she wants to feel that space. Feeling whether those young lives are still there, whether you still feel anything at all. “I think that only then will I be able to figure out what should happen to ‘t Hemeltje. And whether something should be done with it. I find it so difficult. But I’m also going to make stories there, see if there are similarities. And I will also tell that story, because I am a journalist.”
“I spoke to a fellow sufferer there, his name is Roz. Our stories are almost the same. I sometimes call him the Swedish Gerie. He has also made a book and documentary. I want to know if there is a tire through the fire. To learn from that again. And to continue again. And to see whether and how we should continue here in Volendam.”
The documentary that Gerie made can be viewed below.
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