Mentioned below is a part of the speech that K.Schippers held on May 4 2010 in the Nieuwe Kerk
The arrival of jazz
“May 7 1945, 65 years ago, we are liberated. At the Dam, in front of the Nieuwe Kerk, is crowded with people. In the meanwhile they want something else, something new and they gonna get it. I’m not yet at the Dam. With eight other guys and a neighbour I walk through Amsterdam-West. My brother jerks a sign form the Ortskommandantur out the ground. We didn’t know were we were going, it doesn’t matter anymore were you are, we’ll see,it’s a lovely feeling.
‘Apple taste of banana!, its written on a window shop. In the canal two boys paddle an a raft made from Canadian biscuit tins. It’s getting crowded.
If you walk straight ahead you come automatically at the Dam.Almost. We walk into the Paleisstraat, suddenly there’s a shot, hard, tatatatatatata, behind each other.
It’s possible to turn around, we elbow us a way out through the mass, we ran and ran and we stand still not until the Jan van Galenstraat.
We bang at the door, on another one, mabey the’re going to shoot everywhere, let us in, let us in……. More than half a century later I returned to the neighbourhood in
West from where I walked that May 7 to the Dam.”
The whole speech can be downloaded as PDF. (in Dutch)
