Klein Amerika

Groesbeek is in a weird part of the Netherlands.  It is actually pretty hilly.  What I didn't realize, until we saw a scale representation of the area, is that it is the only hilly part in the middle of the flat, flat Netherlands landscape.  When you look at the 3-D map it is all flat, then a giant (relatively speaking) mound of hills, and then more flatness.  It is very odd looking.  In the walk to the cemetery, which was through a fairly rural area, you almost would have thought that you were near Lynchburg.

Rolly hills, trees turning colors, corn stubble, it all felt very familiar and, since it was pretty cloudy, you couldn't really tell that there weren't mountains in the background

And weird, pretty clouds.  And cows.

And deer.  The guys I was walking with thought that these were White-Tail deer but I am not convinced.  I think that look more like Fallow deer which 1) look like this and 2) are much more common in the Netherlands than White-Tails.

Now, it is quite possible that White-Tail deer populations in the Netherlands/in captivity/in other varieties of circumstances of which I am not aware could look different than I am used to, so these might still be them. These are pictures from the internet of the two kinds of deer.  And, acknowledging that my photo quality is not so great, I think that they definitely look more like Fallow Deer.

Fallow Deer growing antlers

Young White-Tail with spots

Interestingly enough, this part of the Netherlands is called Klein Amerika particularly because of its different landscapes.  Since it was hilly and forested, instead of building dikes and creating little narrow fields delineated by canals, the Dutch cleared the forests and had wider, squarer fields more like what you would see in the U.S.  They equated this type of land usage with U.S. Manifest Destiny and so they called the area Klein Amerika--Little America.

This, for instance, is a Google Maps satellite picture of what the fields look like a few miles east of Rotterdam (and over most of the rest of the Netherlands).  Notice the little marker on the bottom of the picture that shows the scale.  All of these strips are separated by canals (often instead of fences) and most of the them are just a couple-three dozen feet wide.  Can you imagine trying to turn a tractor with a baler and a hay wagon on these little fields?  And if you guess wrong, you end up in a pretty wet ditch.

This, on the other hand, is the way the fields look around Groesbeek.  I left this one a little further out so that you can see just how close to the German border we (and those Allied Paratroopers) were.  The fields are still pretty small but they are much more convenient looking and, notice, there are also bits of forest.

There is a joke that, during the War, a German soldier got lost going through the area around Groesbeek and stopped to ask directions from a farmer.
"Where am I?" he asked.
"Little America," answered the farmer.
"Oh," said the German "I thought we had to go through England to get there."

It was a pretty fun day.  On the way back to Rotterdam, a bunch of us stopped at Nijmegen for some supper, which was fun.  We met at the train station at 7:15 am and we ended up getting back into Rotterdam around 10 pm (We were a little delayed on the way back because of mechanical difficulties with the train and because of a general slow-down that resulted from someone jumping in front of a train near Den Haag) but it was quite a fun excursie.  The train ticket was kind of expensive so I figured that I probably wouldn't go back to see the museum at Arnhem or the other things I had thought of seeing in Nijmegen but now I think it might be worth it after all, especially if I have to go to Utrecht to do research anyways.

Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery

In the afternoon, after we were done with the tour of the Nationaal Bevrijdingsmuseum and our class, a few of us walked over to see the Canadian Cemetery where 3,000 Canadians who died in this area are buried.  There are several cemeteries in the area, including (I think) three for Americans, another one for the Canadians, and one for the Germans. This was the only one within walking distance of the museum.

This is the gatepost of the cemetery.  It is repeated in Dutch on the other side of the gate.  It says:

Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery 1939-1945
"The land on which this cemetery stands is the gift of the Dutch people for the perpetual resting place of the Sailors, Soldiers, and Airmen who are honored here."

The two buildings on the sides are memorials with the names of people who were lost.

This says:

"These walls bear the names of the soldiers of the British Commonwealth and Empire who fell in the Advance from the River Seine through the Low Countries and into Germany but to whom the fortune of war denied a known grave."


















This monument which is at the center of the cemetery says:
"Their name liveth for evermore."

This is the inscription at the top of one of the pavilions of names.  It says "Pro amicis mortui amicis vivimus"--"We live on in the hearts of the friends for whom we died."

Most of the gravestones had a name and some inscription.  A vast majority (at least of the ones I saw as I walked through in five minutes) had a cross and a Bible verse or some sentiment relating to another life.

I did see one with a Star of David.




I also saw one with nothing at all on it. The quote, which I neglected to write down, was from Rousseau.  Rousseau might be good for a lot of things but it seems so sad to have him, only, as your epitaph.

I thought the inscription on this one was interesting considering he was fighting on foreign soil and that Canada had not been attacked.  It suggests a different understanding of patriotism than people often think of today (as well as the complexities of imperial relationships).  It says "I gave my life for my God and for my country."

There was a large cross in the cemetery with a Dutch flag on one side and a Candadian flag on the other.

Nationaal Bevrijdingsmuseum

On October 20th, my "Historical Culture in the Globalizing World" class took a field trip to the National Liberation Museum.  It commemorates the events in 1944-1945 between D-day and the end of German occupation of the Netherlands.  A bunch of us took the train over.  It took about two hours to get there but it was fun to hang out and chat.  You can see the English version of the Museum home page here, if you would like.

This picture (from the official museum website) is of the place where they display some of the special exhibits.  It is designed to look like a parachute.  When we went, it was filled with a temporary display of old vehicles.  The museum curator said that it has been a really big draw and there has been a noticeable increase in attendance since it came.

Original Movie Poster

The museum is in located in Groesbeek, which is  quite close
to the German border.  Along with Arnhem, Groesbeek was the site of Operation Market Garden where Allied paratroopers where parachuted in to the heart of the Netherlands in an attempt to break the German stranglehold.  The operation at Arnhem ended disasterously and was commemorated in the movie "A Bridge Too Far" (which I now feel like I need to see at some point).  The operation at Groesbeek was more successful and there were Allied troops stationed there for the rest of the war.

The museum curator said that he is sending a letter to Steven Spielberg asking him to do a movie about the part of Market Garden that happened at Groesbeek.  We'll see how that goes.

More recent DVD cover

I thought that they did a pretty good job with the museum.  The purpose of the trip was to see the ways in which museums could shape the interpretation of history by their visitors, so the museum director gave us a special tour discussing the ways they chose to present the history of the Liberation.  One of the things he mentioned was the way that people used the nylon back-up parachutes (which were everywhere) to make wedding dresses and baby clothes.  He brought in his own little christening gown which was made out of that nylon.  His mother had used the parachute for her wedding dress and then made her dress into the little baby gown.  Interestingly enough, not so long ago, a German woman came in with the two little christening gowns in which her two little boys had been buried.  Their little gowns were made out of Allied parachutes that had fallen on the German side of the border during the operation.  The little boys had died during the huge plague that swept through north-west Germany the year after the war as a result of malnutrition.  In the 70s, the little boys were moved to the family cemetery and the mother kept their little gowns.  She donated them to the museum so that they would be remembered.

The museum gets a lot of its exhibits from people in the area who bring in things they have had stored in their attic or in their barns.  The curator said that they get between 10-15 donations a day.  They had one of the gliders which, having no engines, were towed to the Netherlands by regular airplanes and then landed by themselves, filled with food, supplies, and equipment.  Someone had had the cockpit of the plane in their barn for 60 years.

They also had a rusted out submarine which was found nearby a couple of years ago when the river was very low.  The Germans really wanted those bridges back, or at least destroyed, but had limited means to achieve that goal.  They sent one-man submarines up the river, trying to bomb the bridges.  They were teeny tiny, maybe chest high, with two torpedoes and no toilet facilities.  One other of these submarines is in a Dutch museum, in pretty good shape and the Groesbeek museum really, really wants it.  This one was found buried in the river bottom.  I don't know if the pilot got out (one would tend to think he didn't) but the idea of dying in a little, cramped tin can on the bottom of a river is just too terrible to contemplate.  The other way the Germans tried to get the bridges was to send Olympic swimmers down the river.  The river was the front lines of the war and so the swimmers would be shot at by both sides.  One swimmer did eventually make it though, and succeeded in blowing up one of the bridges.

One topic the museum especially tries to address is the reality of the Dutch response to the War.  They try to emphasize that all Dutch folk weren't in the resistance (apparently, according to a poll or census of some kind taken shortly after the war, 90% of the Dutch said they were part of the resistance) and to argue that everyone who wasn't in the resistance wasn't, by necessity, a collaborator.  They have little displays for kids to work through that suggest that things weren't always black and white and that there were really three choices which could be made: resistance, accommodation, and collaboration.  For instance, if you own a factory and the Germans want you to provide them with fabric for their uniforms, do you "Resist"--say no, get shot, get your wife and kids deported to the concentration camps, and get your factory taken over by the Germans anyways or do you "Accommodate"--help the Germans, get rich by committing treason, but use that money to help the resistance, enable your workers to stay at home with their families instead being deported to Germany to work, and maybe even be able to sabotage the Germans in some way.  The curator said that they try not to make judgments about the validity of those choices, they just try to show the reality of what the Dutch were dealing with at the time, although I do think that they generally did not point to collaboration as a good thing.

The museum curator said that they are in the process of trying to arrange for the creation of a large National WWII museum at Nijmegen and then leaving the three museums which currently exist (at Groesbeek, Anrhem, and some other place) as regional museums.  He said that they are currently in the fund raising stage for this.  The Germans are very interested in helping to fund it and he said that the Russians and the Chinese are a little competitive over who has the most money to spend on a Dutch WWII museum which seems like it would make an interesting dynamic.  He also said that, when he took over at the museum he was told "Do not ask the Americans for money.  They saved us, that was enough, we don't ask them for money, too."  He isn't very old, I don't think, so this must have been fairly recently, and I thought that was quite interesting.  However, apparently the U.S. has indicated an interest in helping to fund the new museum project and he thought that was pretty great.

He said that, in the Netherlands, the Dutch government will supply a museum with 85% of its required revenue but that the museum must make up the remaining 15% with tickets and the gift shop or snack bar, private donations, etc.  He said that the Nationaal Bevrijdingsmuseum makes 90% of its income from ticket sales, the gift shop, the snack bar (you can buy Cup-a-soups and pop there), etc., and the government only pays for 10%.  Since their goal is to keep that ratio, not counting the actual building expense, he is somewhat optimistic about their prospects.  That actually sounds pretty impressive.  I don't know what the Smithsonian does but I bet they are pretty heavily subsidized.  Also, he said that this museum gets a pretty high percentage of international visitors.  Most of the museum literature and labels were done in Dutch, English, and German, as a reflection of this.

St. Pieter's Kerk

St. Pieter's Kerk is a very tall church in Leiden.  It was the church beside which the Pilgrims lived.  It was also closed the day that I went because they were preparing for an event the next day.

This is the sign that says you can't go into the building.  It was sad because it looked like it was mighty pretty.  There was a choir practicing inside when I was walking around the church, though, and it sounded very pretty.

This is the little sign with information about the church and below is the English part of the text.  

Some of the Pilgrims who died in Leiden are buried inside the church.

This is a road sign right next to the church.  Note the directions to the Van der Werfpark, where I went; the Pilgrim Archives, which is currently closed because it is moving; the Sieboldhuis, where I went; and the Latijnse (Latin) School, where (I believe) Rembrandt attended school for a little while at around the same time as the Pilgrims were living there.

 This is one of the little streets leading away from the church.  I took this picture just after it was raining and just before it started with the torrential down-pours.  One good thing about streets this narrow is that, if you squish up against the wall, you can usually avoid at least some of the rain.  When the rain would get really bad then people would be lined up along the walls, waiting for a little break in the rain before they started off again.

I am fairly certain that the Pilgrim's houses would have been lined up just the other side of the church in this picture.

Haven Kerk

One of the surprising things that I got to see when I was at the Schiedam Openmonument dag was the Haven Kerk.  It is completely closed now, while going through some (much needed) restorations.  But it was open when I went and they had displays up detailing the restoration process and the guys who were doing the restoration were there answering questions about what they had to do to make the church safe and sound.  The Haven Kerk (Port Church) is right on one of the main canals through town.

When I went into the church, it was very cool (which was nice because it was a warmish day out) and it also had a really familiar smell.  At first I couldn't think what it was and then I realized that it smelled just like the basement at Temple Baptist, and it had that same cool, unused feeling.




This is the plaque about the church that is set outside the front door.  Note that it was built in a "neo-classical style with a neo-baroque interior".















This was the first view of the sanctuary.  Even without the pews, and with looking kind of ratty up close, this is a pretty spectacular view.

This is what you would call a real pulpit.  If you notice the lady in the lower left corner, you will get an idea of the scale.  The lowest edges of the railings are about chin high.  This is a rear/side view because the sun was coming through the windows right behind the pulpit and none of my pictures turned out from the front.  If you notice the figures at the front of the pulpit they are slightly larger than life size.

There is a historic organ in the church.

This is the confessional.  The little old lady was entertaining.  I kept waiting for her to move so I could get a clearer shot but she seemed so interested in it that I decided to just included her.  She was peering through the bars and ducking around looking under the signs and trying to get a better view.  The pictures that are on the fence are of other Dutch churches that have had similar restorations and which they were using as inspiration for this project.

This is the left side of the church.  There are four separate creches here. 
Although, it is worth noting that, in Dutch, creche doesn't just mean scene of 
mother and child, especially of Jesus and Mary, it also means, and is used 
frequently for, a nursery.  So church bulletins mention who is playing the organ
and who is serving in the creche.  When I first saw that notation, I was, seriously, 
looking around the church trying to find the Manger Scene and wondering why 
the church started its Christmas celebrations so early.

This is the right side of the church. The painting, I think, is the scene were
Simeon sees the baby Jesus at that temple.

This is the front of the church.  The inscription on the crown, above the scene where Jesus is crowning his mother Mary, says "To God Alone be Honor and Glory."

The church had stained-glass windows that depicted all of the apostles.  It also had apostles/significant early Christian figures in statues that must have been at least three feet tall, stuck to all of the pillars through the sanctuary.

<---Andrew--Ben, you should notice his cross which is the basis for Scotland's flag.








Bartholomew--I am a little curious about what that curvy knife signifies.--->

These are both labeled St. Jacobus--that is to say, James.

<---Before I saw the label on this one, I assumed that it was supposed to be a statue of Jesus.  I am assuming, then, that this must be James the brother of Jesus and that the artist was going for a family resemblance.

Which would make this one the James that wasn't Jesus's brother--->

<---John



Matthew--notice that he is writing in what looks like a little tax record book.-->

<---Paul--I am not sure about the significance of the sword.



Peter, holding keys--->















<---Thaddeus--he is sleeping, I think.



Thomas--->















<---Philip

Simon--->