SPS MediaThe Putten monument was defaced by graffiti
In collaboration with
Omroep Gelderland
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 3.35pm
In Putten, a building commemorating the 1944 raid, in which the Germans took 659 men away, was defaced. On the monument is written “7 October ’23” in green graffiti, next to which is a Star of David with a line above and below. Stichting Oktober 44, the building’s manager, filed a complaint.
The story of the raid is told in the memorial hall. In the building there are also plaques with the names of the victims who died in the raid. It is unclear who is behind the action. The date scrawled on the building is the day Hamas carried out a large-scale terrorist attack on Israel, killing 1,200 people.
“Nothing to do with the raid”
Gert van Dompseler of the Oktober 44 Foundation talks about a sad gesture. “I don’t understand the connection with our space. It’s about the raid and has nothing to do with it,” he told Omroep Gelderland.
The raid on Putten was in retaliation for a resistance action in which a German officer was killed. On October 1, 1944, the Veluwe resistance fired at a German car carrying two officers and two corporals on the road from Putten to Nijkerk. One of them did not survive.
The next day, Putten was surrounded by German troops. They set houses on fire, separated men from women, and deported the men to Camp Amersfoort. Several dozen patients were released, the rest were transported from Amersfoort to the Neuengamme concentration camp in northern Germany. After the war, only 48 of the more than 600 men returned alive.
Van Dompseler has now reported the graffiti. According to him, this is not the first incident in the memorial hall. “About 18-19 years ago, for example, a safe was stolen. Since then there have always been cameras inside.”
Van Dompseler says last night’s spots were not caught on camera. “They were not inside and therefore were not caught on camera.”
“Cryptic Graffiti”
The director of CIDI, the Israeli Information and Documentation Center, Naomi Mestrum, tells Omroep Gelderland that she doesn’t understand graffiti. “I can’t call it anti-Semitism, because I think it’s just cryptic graffiti. What’s the message?”
Mestrum is annoyed that the situation in the Gaza Strip is often compared to the past, such as World War II. “Why do we always have to include history?” asks the director. “We commemorate history without harm.”
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2023-12-31 14:35:44
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