Daily Image

20-09-1968
PreviousNext
Click here or on the picture for a full size image.

A Thin Red Line

Submitter: Anke den Duyn
Description: At the silent places on Earth, where astronomers look back in time with advanced technology, various historical timelines may intersect. In 1964, an icon of radio astronomy was put on the map by means of a thin red line, crossing out camp "Schattenberg". It was the first uncontroversial use of this small piece of land for several decades.

More than ten years earlier, in March 1951, the ship "Kota Inten" had brought the first KNIL soldiers and their families from the tropical Molucca Islands to the chilly Netherlands. They were the unfortunate remnants of an unfortunate colonial "police action" just before Indonesia won its independence. They were accommodated in the former concentration camp Westerbork. The tainted name of the camp was thoughtfully changed into Schattenberg, and the stay of the people in the Netherlands was deemed to be temporary.

Ever since, a close-knit society had been living behind the old fence. While the Moluccan refugees were in residence, a small village with a shop, several churches and even a theater were to be found there, isolated from the rest of the world. Children were now being born in the same barracks where Jews, Sinti, Roma, resistance fighters and other "undesirables" were once kept for transportation to even more unfortunate destinations. While growing up, those children played near the former latrines ("nur für Männer") after school, or sneaked away to prowl around the construction site of the new Observatory.

At the start of the assembly of the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT), part of the camp had already been dismantled. Only about a thousand men, women and children were still living in Schattenberg, and soon they had all moved.

So, three (or rather four) very different episodes of recent Dutch history are captured in a single view of the camp.
Copyright: Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork
 
  Follow us on Twitter
Please feel free to submit an image using the Submit page.