As a boy of 16 years old I was an eyewitness of the shooting at the Dam. Before this tragedy started, there was an incident that is less known.

I stood not far away from the Grote Club when in the midst of the crowd a German Marine man, armed with a machine-gun, came riding on his bike.
He got stopped and they tried to disarm him. He got off and with his wapon at the ready to shoot. Before it came to a shooting the marine man was hit in his leg by a police officer.
To what extent this incident has contributed to the following tragedy I don’t know, but in my memory I always linked these facts to each other.

Published in NRC Handelsblad May 19 1992.