The Foundation received from Mrs.Mathilda van Bentum-Hofker a detailed report of her memories as a 9 year old young girl over the period 1939-1946.
She lived in the Zeeheldenbuurt neighborhood with her parents, three older brothers and sister, and a younger brother of 16. One day, her eldest brother came in dressed in a soldier’s uniform and told her it was war; her parents knew what that meant; they had already experienced the war of 1914-1918. She wrote about the hardships of the war: the hunger, risking her own lives to steal potatoes from a train, the unemployment, but also about what the gentleman farmer did to her and other girls when they were housed in the Veluwe region, and about the loss of a baby brother in early 1945. Her brothers were forced to work in Germany and the Ukraine. Her sister also followed her husband to Germany. Her father was temporarily exempted because he had a (self-inflicted) wound on his foot, only to be forced to work later. All survived the war.
About May 7 and the shooting at the Dam, Mrs.Van Bentum-Hofker wrote:
…’And then finally, leaflets were dropped from a plane over the Netherlands, announcing that Germany had lost the war and liberation was a fact. Everyone took to the streets cheering, the Germans saving their lives and fleeing our country for fear of being murdered. All Amsterdammers went to Dam Square to express their joy. I, too, was standing in the midst of that large crowd when suddenly shots rang out from a building. A friend who was also on Dam Square with her mother was killed by a gunshot, terrible for her parents; she was their only child. Panic broke out, and everyone ran into Nieuwendijk or Kalverstraat. Many people fell and were trampled. It turned out that there were still Germans inside a building who had fired into the crowd. It was a day etched in my memory.’…
It turned out of research that the girl was Rika Overdijk, she died at the age of 12.
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Als de dag van gisteren kan ik Mathilda Hofker, die dag herinneren.
Met angst en zorg zie ik dat er nog steeds rassen haat is, Het waarom begrijp ik nog steeds niet, ieder mens wordt naakt geboren en is sterfelijk. waar je op deze aarde geboren wordt en of je arm bent of rijk. je gaat.