July 17, 2024 marks ten years since flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine. As a result, an entire family from Roden disappeared, and in their wake the grandfather of the family. Rob van der Linde, his wife Erla van der Linde-Palm and daughter Merel (17) and Mark (12) died. Henk Palm, Erla’s father, died a few days later.
A family in the middle of society. Father Rob had worked for the National Railways for years, mother Erla at the GAK (the predecessor of the UWV). Daughter Merel had just finished high school in Roden, while son Mark performed his final musical from primary school Het Valkhof in the De Pompstee hall center in June. A few months later, many of his classmates were there again, this time to commemorate Mark.
“That makes the event extra sad,” says Coos Boerma, director of Het Valkhof in 2014. “Both children, Merel and Mark, were ready for a new phase in their lives. Then it is cut short, which is very dramatic.”
July 17, 2014 will forever remain a national trauma. The disaster, the mourning and the impressive way of commemoration by the Dutch people are etched in the memories of many. What few know, however, is that – in addition to the 283 passengers – there was another MH17 victim. Five days after the disaster, Henk Palm, then 93 years old, died. “He was done, he didn’t want to do it anymore,” recalls namesake and nephew Henk Palm (72) from Epe.
Palm remembers how he went to Roden with his wife shortly after the disaster. He did that more often, at least twice a year. “We often came here in the winter and during the Ascension Day fair. I had good contact with my uncle,” says Palm.
His uncle had left Epe to live closer to his daughter Erla. “He often visited his daughter and grandchildren. He was here in the nursing home and was very proud of his daughter.”
When his nephew came to visit him the day after the disaster, the very elderly Palm already knew what time it was. “That I still have to experience this,” his namesake then heard him say. “What do you say to someone?”, Henk Palm asks himself almost ten years later. “I honestly don’t know what I said then. Those days I lived in a daze.”
This was also because cousin Henk was asked to arrange the funeral for the family. “In the meantime, I saw that my uncle was also getting worse. I remember coming back to Epe and saying to my wife: ‘I don’t think this is going well’. A little later he died.”
Palm first buried his uncle and only six weeks later his niece and her family. “Then they were only identified and the whole circus started again. All the media wanted to talk to me, but there was so little to say.”
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