1,568 words
Ysselsteyn War Cemetery. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
I have contemplated writing about this for a while now. “What’s the point?” I thought to myself. “We all know the drill.” But it continues to rankle. Which, I guess, was exactly the purpose.
Last year, I visited the German war cemetery at Ysselsteyn, Netherlands, for the first time. I had long wanted to go there, as it is the last resting place of my great-uncle Hinrich. “Hinni” died on May 10, 1940, in a plane crash. For years I had wondered about that. The story told by my aunt was that he had served in the Luftwaffe, the German air force. However, his file clearly states that he had been infantry. So when one day the people managing Ysselsteyn cemetery introduced their new visitor center (online – this was still during Covid lockdowns) and asked family members to send them photos and life stories about the men buried there, I immediately complied.
As it turned out, they knew more about Hinni’s death than I did. He had been attached to an airborne unit, and their objective had been to get to Den Haag on the day of the invasion of the Netherlands and arrest the royal family and military high-ups. To this day, it seems very weird to me. Hinni was a farmer’s son from a tiny village in northern Germany. I simply cannot imagine him going all Band of Brothers. Anyway, his plane was shot down by Dutch air defense.
In the summer of 2023, the Volksbund, the German war graves commission, of which I am a member, organized a trip to Ysselsteyn cemetery and the Overloon War Museum (absolutely worth a visit, if you’re ever in the area). Naturally, I registered for it, and I am glad I did. As far as I know, I was the first family member ever to visit Hinni’s grave. It’s a nice spot, located on a small rise and overlooking the fields of graves. Hinni rests among others who have died on May 10, 1940, probably his comrades who died in the crash with him.
Despite having more or less been forced by the US to create this huge cemetery for the enemy on their territory, the Dutch have done a beautiful job. Almost all soldiers have individual gravesites (except those who had initially been buried in mass graves and their bones could no longer be matched to a specific person upon exhumation), something even the Volksbund does not do anymore.
Did I say “even” the Volksbund? Ah, well. I am still a paying member because they keep looking for my grandfather (a Stalingrad casualty) and possibly my great-grandfather (Hinni’s father, whose grave in France was “lost” at some point), and because I believe German war graves deserve to be maintained. But as far as politics go, we have our differences. I have already written about my first visit to the Bretzenheim Camp museum. The second visit went marginally better, and I even managed to score points with some relatives of former Rhine Meadows Camps prisoners for challenging the sugar-coated narrative espoused by the Volksbund nowadays.
However, the Empire inevitably struck back. On the Volksbund website, there is this report, originally published in December 2023 (my translation).
“Gates of Remembrance” is the name of the five glass steles that the American artist Arnold Dreyblatt has erected on the grounds in Ysselsteyn on behalf of the Volksbund. They show places where victims of the National Socialist occupation were persecuted and murdered and name the various groups of victims in the Netherlands. “Never again!” is the central message. The memorial was inaugurated on December 4, 2023, and the German embassy published a video in March 2024.
The commemoration at the German war cemetery in Ysselsteyn has been controversial in the past. In addition to the graves of Wehrmacht soldiers, members of the SS and Dutch collaborators, there are also, according to current research, around 2,000 to 3,000 graves of people who may have been actively involved in war crimes and the systematic persecution and murder of Jews, Sinti, Roma and other population groups. Jewish communities in the Netherlands had called for an immediate end to commemorative events on Remembrance Day in Ysselsteyn.
The Volksbund and the German Embassy in the Netherlands then invited representatives of the Jewish communities and other victim groups to a round table. In an intensive dialog lasting several years, a mutual understanding of the respective positions had developed. The participants agreed that a visible sign should be created for those who had even been denied a grave. As a result, the Volksbund announced an art competition for a memorial. A German-Dutch jury chose the design by Berlin-based artist Arnold Dreyblatt.
“I wanted to create a visible and accessible space of commemoration, contemplation and remembrance as an incision in the central axis of the military cemetery,” says Dreyblatt about his memorial, which is located in a prominent position behind the high cross. “The resulting memorial points to an ‘open wound’ that refers to a ‘counter-history’ and brings the fate of the persecuted, outlawed and murdered victims of National Socialism into the historical site.” It is intended to complement the war cemetery and make visible all those who are not commemorated by a gravestone.
This is the first time that the Volksbund has erected a memorial to the victims of the National Socialist occupation at a German war cemetery abroad. Dirk Backen, Secretary General of the Volksbund, emphasized the significance of the new memorial: “Ysselsteyn is a milestone for the Volksbund. The visible remembrance of all victim groups of the former enemy in the midst of their own graves is an expression of our true desire for reconciliation and at the same time a clear acknowledgement of our own responsibility before history and our commitment to a peaceful future. Ysselsteyn is a blueprint for common European remembrance in the 21st century.”
Numerous guests accepted the invitation of the Volksbund and the German Embassy to the inauguration of the memorial. In addition to the German Ambassador Dr. Cyrill Jean Nunn and Secretary General Dirk Backen, representatives of the victims’ groups paid tribute to the “Gates of Remembrance” and underlined the appeal “Never again!”
Dik de Boef, Chairman of the umbrella organization of former resistance fighters and victims in the Netherlands, referred to the still relevant role model function of the resistance. He spoke of a “moral compass that we can use as a guide – now that the gloomy wind of ‘own people first’ is blowing through Europe again.”
The Chief Rabbi of the Inter Provinciaal Opperrabbinaat in the Netherlands, Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs, compared the opening of the memorial site to the flame of the menorah, the eight-branched candelabrum whose candles are lit for Hanukkah. “Its purpose is to remember the past, to dwell on it, but above all to dispel the darkness of today’s anti-Semitism … and to bring light, peace and shalom to the State of Israel – to all those who suffer from anti-Semitism or are discriminated against and persecuted in any way.”
Shalom this, Rabbi Jacobs. Of course you had to slap your menorah on a German war cemetery. “Those who had even been denied a grave”, my ass. My grandfather doesn’t have a grave, either. Am I demanding “an immediate end to commemorative events” in Russia because of that? And as for discrimination and persecution, the Dutch SS men buried at Ysselsteyn were denied citizenship in their own country, by their own countrymen. Just saying.
(((These people))) truly are insufferable.
Well, as the saying goes, haters gonna hate. I am more disgusted by the actions of the Germans and Dutch involved in this travesty. There was absolutely no need to give in on this. The Jews have their Holocaust memorials. They don’t need another one at Ysselsteyn. How tasteful would it be to install a stele to the Axis and Allied dead at Yad Vashem? (Now there’s an idea…) And don’t get me started on the nonsense Mr. de Boef was saying.
“The visible remembrance of all victim groups of the former enemy in the midst of their own graves is an expression of our true desire for reconciliation.” No, it’s not. Reconciliation (Versöhnung), the Volksbund’s eternal buzzword, is a mutual thing. What about their true desire? It’s obviously not reconciliation but a perpetuation of the German guilt trip. It’s spite – that’s where the “in the midst of their own graves” part comes in.
So what you are talking about, Mr. Backen, simply translates to humiliation ritual, and I’d ask you not to speak in the name of the German people, thank you very much.
If you want to talk about reconciliation, talk about Captain Timmermans, the heart and soul of Ysselsteyn cemetery. That is all any human being needs to know, “former resistance fighters” first and foremost.
By the way, am I the only one slightly disturbed by this being “the first time” that the Volksbund has erected a memorial of this kind? How many more can we expect in the future?
In the 1970s, my father met a Dutchman who hated everything German because that was how he had been raised in the post-war Netherlands. My father managed to talk him out of it, and they became the best of friends. When my father passed away, this Dutchman said that he had considered him a brother. That is how reconciliation is supposed to work. It is something that comes from within, not from a bloody virtue signaling memorial.
16 comments
The Germans stole all bikes from the Dutch in 1940, so the Dutch soccer fans during the soccer games always call to Germans: Waar is mijn fiets? Where is my bike?
They can find their fiets attached to their leijgs and covered by shuues. 🙂
More seriously, with all the signs of current bicycle theft I saw in Amsterdam (such as bare frames stripped of all parts and still chained to the canal railings after goodness knows how long), it’s a little odd that the bike atrocity of the 1940s still endures as a meme. Never forgive, never forget!
Everibody knows that the bikes, stolen in the NL by Germans, all went later to the Soviet Union – together with the German bikes. But the Dutch do not scream about their stolen bikes during the games with Russian soccer teams, the Russians are good “liberators.”
I’m surprised that FDR’s long-term houseguest Harry Hopkins didn’t already provide a shiny new American bike to every one of his comrades across the Arctic Ocean by then. Since it’s the only thing they hadn’t asked for and received, maybe his handler forgot.
I was a fan of the television show Seinfeld for years. Most of the characters in the show are Jewish, except for one, Kramer, played by the actor Michael Richards. But the characters in the show are not presented as Jewish, and the show is directed at the general public. There are a few episodes where Jewishness might come up, but they are rare.
Maybe I am putting too much thought into this, but I doubt it. In one episode, Kramer accidentally spills a flammable liquid on the street, and by chance, Newman drives over it, and the truck he drives bursts into flames, engulfing him while he’s driving. This is a comedy show, and Newman yells “Oh, the humanity” with a laugh track in the background, so it’s not meant to be serious. I believe, or suspect, the first time I saw that episode many years ago, I immediately thought of the Hindenburg disaster in the 1930s when the Zeppelin, the Hindenburg, burst into flames over New York and 36 people were killed. In the 1970’s there was a movie made about what happened, and you would sometimes see a short film clip of the event on television, and you would hear the radio broadcaster say, “Oh, the humanity!”. I suspect that is where the producers of Seinfeld picked it up.
I think it’s generally considered improper to laugh at someone being killed. The disaster was many years ago (1937), and only 37 people died, so apparently it’s okay. It’s also true that in Kristallnacht in 1938, in Germany, “only” 85 Jews were killed, although it is suggested this contributed to the hostility towards Germany that led to the war one year later. I normally would not use the word “only” except to compare the two events. It’s also true that in the second tragedy, people were deliberately killed.
The other day I ran across this on the internet. It says, “When radio reporter Herb Morrison saw the airship Hindenberg [Hindenburg] burst into flames in 1937, he blurted, “Oh, the humanity!” meaning something like, “What terrible human suffering!” Writers who use this phrase today—usually jokingly—are referring back to this famous incident.”
So, according to this, it’s known this is used as a joke. I think the first time I ever saw this expressed as a joke, and perhaps the only time, was on Seinfeld. I think that is where it started and became popularized. It is certainly the only time I’ve seen it with someone being engulfed in flames, as what happened to the people on the Hindenburg. I also read something once commenting on the Hindenburg, with a swastika on it, flying over New York in 1937, upsetting some Jews at the time. I don’t think it’s just a coincidence that this first appeared on a show produced by Jews in which almost all of the actors are also Jewish.
Maybe the Germans could reply with the expression “Oh, the humanity!” when Dutch soccer fans call to the Germans, “Waar is mijn fiets? Where is my bike?”
Thanks you. Fight on. (((These people))) are not insufferable, they are malicious. I try, slowly, diplomatically, and gingerly, to get people of our kind to see for themselves what we are immersed in. But they do not want to. They are some mixture of being too comfortable, afraid, uninformed and misinformed.
At some point in conversations I have gotten to the point where they (that is, another one of our people who is still uninformed) get annoyed and angry with me, and that is where I have to tell them that I am not ignorant, I am not denying reality, I am not putting my hands over my ears and yelling at them as they do to me, to ‘shut up you hater’.
The most effective point I make (based upon it being the most often resulting in a response other than ‘shut up’) is asking this or a similar question: ‘why is there only one group of people in the world that you can go to jail for criticizing?’.
As the Cooper fellow talking to Carlson said, Churchill was the villain of WWII, a boozing traitor to our people.
Best wishes in finding the final resting places of your ancestors.
Another excellent piece by Frau Schnabel. Thank you for sharing your thoughts as few non-Germans will be aware of the many issues surrounding German war cemeteries around the world (black and flat on their back headstones in Normandy, the state of the Fallschirmjäger monument on Crete. Or the twerking youth convened by the CDU to dance on top of their graves in NRW, the list is so long). I used to go around in uniform raising funds door to door when I was in the Bundeswehr but have completely stopped supporting the Volksbund since they went full on anti-German. Not even sure how schizophrenic one would have to be to work there, maintaining war graves while ideologically spitting on the men in them?! The rank and file, as they say, are wonderful people but the leadership of the organization is using the war dead as one more cudgel to beat ethnomasochism into the heads of the last non-bowed and historically aware Germans. I fully understand your personal reasons for maintaining a membership, though.
Every Volkstrauertag I go to the local war memorial and suffer through speeches by officials shedding performative tears about victims of war the world over, but our soldiers have not been mentioned at all three years running. Let’s see what happens next month.
Wonderful work, as always, Frau Schnabel. Bin jedes mal beeindruckt und berührt.
Herzlichen Dank für Ihre lieben Worte!
I couldn’t agree with you more. The Volksbund higher-ups talk about having to change the organization’s ways as the old generation dies off and the youth has no connection to the reconciliation aspect any more. Yet they still talk incessantly about reconciliation when it comes to selling out everything that matters.
We don’t have a Volkstrauertag ceremony where I live, and in a way, I’m glad. Better to have nothing (except the obligatory wreath) than empty words. Nobody minds commemorating all war dead, not just the soldiers, but to write the soldiers out of their own history as it’s being done now… that’s disrespect on a whole new level.
This is conquest. In this particular instance, it is a desecration just as the houses of Madison, Washington and Jefferson are being desecrated by the CEO/Founder of the parasite known as Carlyle Group. It won’t stop until that graveyard is removed and fully replaced with some iconography of the ethnic group bent on conquest or this project of ethnic conquest is stopped. That graveyard and memorial and our people are targeted for the same fate.
Spite and hatred at some point need to be met in kind. Until or if the power dynamic shifts accidental looking vandalism of the kind that takes place in Christian cemetaries and sites in, “The Holy Land”, seem perfectly warranted.
Excellent piece. Add this to the many subjects I need to know more about. It makes me feel for the Southerners here that have had to suffer as their history is dismantled and spat on by a generation of ingrates. Whatever the current powers that be can do to dehumanize the South or the Germans is all they seem to care about. Scoring social points. Dare I say there might even be a similar group influencing both scenarios? Oops. My social credit score dropped.
This is nothing other than the desecration of a soldiers’ graveyard. Maybe they should have similar disclaimers attached to Allied and Soviet memorials regarding war crimes committed against the Germans.
The German WWI memorial which my wife and I visited in Bavaria years ago was the most solemn and brooding piece of monumental architecture we’d ever experienced. In the quiet solitude of the Voralpen…Deutschland erwache.
Historically seen the Dutch is a part of German people, even in their anthem Wilhelminus there are words like “I am prince of Oranje, of the German blood”. My Dutch friends told me, that the Dutch felt BETRAYED by Germans, when they attacked the NL in 1940.
Thank you for another outstanding article. This really is a new low from the German and Dutch authorities. I wasn’t aware of Captain Timmermans – thank you so much for sharing the history of such a decent and honourable man.
The guide at Ysselsteyn cemetery told us Captain Timmermans’ story, including many examples of what a fine man he was. I very much liked the one of the mother who came to Ysselsteyn every year for a week or so to sit at her son’s grave daily. Timmermans installed a bench (there were none at the time) specifically for her.
I was very moved when I learned that he wanted to have his ashes scattered across the cemetery. “So he is still here,” the guide said.
This reminds me when I was stationed in Germany, at a park near my barracks, was a war memorial with a Stonehenge-like circle and a German soldier’s face at the front. it was very solemn and elegiac. Every November there was a huge wreath with an Iron Cross on it laid at its base after a ceremony.
I describe it in my novel German Days.
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