Frank van Dijk of the 18 September Foundation was one surprise after another when he examined all the names on the war memorial on the Stadhuisplein in Eindhoven. “It contains 22 names of people from Eindhoven with a wrong war history. I had found almost half of them without too much trouble as an SS or NSB member. I have often wondered how this is possible.”
The war memorial was unveiled in 1954. “There were no names on it at the time. In 2013, the ‘Remember the names’ foundation had nearly 1100 names engraved on 93 panels at the monument. My research shows that 43 panels contain incorrect names.”
“I don’t want to make a moral judgement. I just have the facts.”
Those wrongly mentioned names are not only the names of Eindhoven residents with a wrong war past. “There are also names of Eindhoven residents who died in wartime due to a cerebral hemorrhage or car accident. These are not war victims,” says researcher Frank van Dijk.
He spent two years working on the backgrounds of the names on the monument. “I don’t want to make a moral judgement. I only have the facts. Then it turns out that there are 22 names of wrong Eindhoven residents. There are another 31 names of Eindhoven residents who have not died of war violence.”
“There are 144 names missing that need to be mentioned.”
In addition to the dozens of names that are incorrectly mentioned, the reverse has also happened. “There are 144 names missing that need to be mentioned.” For example, according to Van Dijk, the names of 38 Sinti, often called ‘gypsies’ in the past, who died in the Eindhoven razzia in 1944, are missing.”
The 18 September foundation now has a list of 1200 names published of names for the monument. “This also includes the wrong names and the names that are missing. I’m not going to make a moral judgment about what should happen now. That’s what the municipality is about. It owns the monument.”
“It’s not all black and white.”
Van Dijk has sent an extensive report to the municipality. “It’s up to them now. It’s not all black and white either. Is a 19-year-old German who fled to Eindhoven and had to join the Wehrmacht an Eindhoven war victim?”
The question why so many names are missing or are wrongly mentioned will haunt Frank van Dijk’s head for a long time to come. “I don’t know if there will ever be an answer to that. Maybe all the publicity will pay off now.” The researcher also found no answers at the Stichting Herinner U De Namen. “These are octogenarians and have no records of the list’s decision-making ten years ago.”
“I know how to search, so a world opens up when you use Old Dutch spelling.”
How it is possible that the Eindhoven researcher was able to find the background is ‘simple’.
“I know how to search. Also now I have learned a lot. Search for Old Dutch language use, for example. Do not search for ‘dead’ but ‘kill’, information suddenly becomes available. This is how I found the cemetery of an Eindhoven resident. His 81-year-old son had been looking for it all his life.”
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