When the first forerunner of Christian Courier was published in 1945, I was a four-year-old in the Netherlands, newly liberated from Nazi rule. The Hunger Winter was only three months behind us, and my first memory was of terrifyingly loud noises overnight. Only much later did I learn that the scary racket came from squadrons…
“Every day I get to wake up in the best place on earth: Holland, Michigan.” So says Nancy Vandergroot (Nicole Kidman) at the beginning of Holland*, a new thriller, streaming on Prime, set in the title city in 2000. Nancy’s voiceover accompanies images of children in traditional Dutch costumes and a miniature model of the town….
For me, reading about the Nazi Occupation of the Netherlands can bring about a visceral response. Recently, for example, I was seized with waves of terror while listening to an audiobook version of The Diary Keepers: World War II in the Netherlands, as Written by the People Who Lived Through It by Nina Siegal. In…
My home town of Kampen is a very pretty, small town near the mouth of the river IJssel in the Netherlands. In Reformed circles it became famous because of the seminary founded there by the “separated congregations,” one of the two branches of the Afscheiding of 1854. During the time I lived in Kampen, there…
Our congregation’s annual picnic is now a memory. We had a wonderful day together. The weather was glorious, and nature was dressed in its finest. The water in the lake was just right – not too cold and not too warm; the beach was not yet crowded with Canadians when we arrived in large numbers….
We’re in our corner. There’s a thermos of Douwe Egberts coffee on the table. Today Pete is the server. Instead of Gemberkoek, we have apple pie, which Broekie pulled out of a bag and set beside the thermos. So Broekie brought the pie, though we know Corrie baked it. He hands a plate to each of us and slices the pie into six pieces.
During the 1930’s the Netherlands was, according to Dutch statistics, a deeply religious nation. The majority of its citizens were church-going people. In The Call of Conscience, Dr. Johan Hegeman addresses difficult questions about this time in history. What happened when the rubber of all that church religiosity of the 1930s hit the dark road…
It’s still dark when I wake up. A thought pierces my heart: today is the funeral. Four days ago, on February 22, 1944, an American bombardment tore the heart out of Nijmegen, our city, and shattered our family by killing my eight-year-old brother, Jos. Jos is short for Josef, meaning “God adds.” Yes, God adds,…
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