Bart Janssen delves into Nijmegen's sorrows for decades

Bart Janssen at the portraits he collected of all Nijmegen war victims over the course of 25 years. The photos hang in an alley next to the entrance to the town hall. [Photo: Eveline van Elk]

Bart Janssen was barely three weeks old when bombs devastated downtown Nijmegen in a matter of minutes. "My mother reflexively pulled the baby carriage I was in the right way," he says. He has collected, heard and recorded as many stories as possible from relatives over the past decades.

You often hear that people who have experienced something terrible have a hard time talking about it. Not so the family of Bart Janssen (80). He was still a baby when Nijmegen was hit by American bombs on Feb. 22, 1944, just before 1:30 a.m. He said. "We were in town with the whole family, at my grandparents' house in Ziekerstraat, to say goodbye to an aunt who was going into the convent. My father saw the planes coming over and thought it was strange. Moments later, everything was bombed." The facade smashed out of Grandpa and Grandma's house, which was later completely destroyed by the flames. Miraculously, everyone in his family survived. That was fortunate in a huge accident: there were nearly 800 fatalities in downtown Nijmegen that day.

In the years after the war, Janssen's family often talked about the bombing. "My grandmother knew how to convey to me the pain of the city. So many families and families had been affected. When she died in 1968, I received a shoebox full of prayer cards, newspaper clippings, obituaries and other documentation about the victims of the bombing."

The pain that remains

Bart Janssen was curious. But he initially lacked time. So it took a while before, using the shoebox as a starting point, he set out to find the war victims and their relatives. He visited numerous memorials and ended up at home and abroad talking to relatives and finding out photos of the victims. The stories of more than 400 eyewitnesses resulted in 2005 in the book "The Pain That Remains. An impressive reference work and monument for the Nijmegen people who became involved in this black day in the Second World War in the Netherlands. Like doctor Peljak, where Bart Janssen and his mother had been on February 21. A few minutes before the doctor was to begin his consultation hours on February 22, his house and practice were hit by a direct hit. The doctor, his wife, five of their children, the housekeeper and the patients in the waiting room did not survive.

City and country

For more than 25 years, Janssen was sleuthing and interviewing almost daily. "I was still working, but on weekends I drove all over town to talk to people." For a lot of relatives, it was sometimes the first and only time they wanted to talk about what they had been through. Often by dumb coincidence, they were present or absent from a particular place, and with this their fate and that of their family was sealed.

In 2019, in addition to a new edition of "The Pain that Remains," a new book of his appeared: "The Sorrow of Nijmegen. In it, Janssen pays attention to all Nijmegen war victims, including those who did not die in the bombing, but during Operation Market Garden and in the 'shell time,' in the resistance or as victims of the persecution of the Jews.

Janssen is happy with what he has been able to do and is still doing. "But I can sometimes pull my hair out of my head that I didn't start much earlier. I didn't think about it then, had a busy life. But the longer you wait to write down the stories, the less you can still bring to the surface. It's getting harder and harder now. Because many people who consciously experienced the bombing are no longer around."

The story of the triptych

Jo Zuidgeest, an uncle of Bart Janssen, decided shortly after the bombing in his furniture factory to make a triptych in memory of the 24 children who perished at the Montessori school in the center of Nijmegen. Uncle Jo's little daughter, Eveline, was 3 years old and also attended that school. But she was kept home with grandparents a little longer that day.

She survived because of this, and out of gratitude, but also as a tribute to the children who perished, Jo made the triptych with photos of all the children who perished. That is, 23 children. Uncle Jo did not succeed in finding a photograph of Jopie Gerrits. First the triptych was hung on the rebuilt school, but that proved too painful. It disappeared and for a long time it was not clear where it was.

Bart Janssen only heard about the triptych when his uncle Jo told him about it in 1983. He decided to go looking and managed to track down the triptych. It was donated to the municipality of Nijmegen. At the great commemoration of the bombing in 2003, Bart Janssen spoke to school sister Van Driel. She turned out to have a photograph of Jopie. So the triptych was complete after all, with photographs of all 24 children who perished. The triptych is on display in the Town Hall.

Casualties at Graafseweg cemetery

At the annual commemoration of the bombing of Nijmegen, much attention is paid to the cemetery on Daalseweg.

But according to Bart Janssen, strangely enough, much less attention has been paid to the cemetery on Graafseweg. "While it played a very important role immediately after the bombing. On Feb. 26, 1944, the first hundreds of victims were buried here."

On Feb. 26, 2024, Bart Janssen will give a lecture and tour of the cemetery, where he will talk, among other things, about the mass graves in which many victims lie.