'War child' Nijmegen sympathizes with Ukraine

Photo: Ria Rosendaal anno 2023. © Liberty Museum

As a seven-year-old girl, Ria Rosendaal experienced the bombing of Nijmegen on Feb. 22, 1944. Now she works as a volunteer in the Freedom Museum. There she got to know the German Maria Diedenhofen, who as a young girl was an eyewitness to the bombing of Kleve in October 1944 and February 1945. Ria spoke at the official opening of the Freedom Museum on July 5.

"I was born in Nijmegen in 1937. My parents had a butcher shop in the city center, right next to the church arch on the Grote Markt. Butcher shop Martens. I lived with my father, mother, older brother Hennie and my grandfather above the butcher shop. I was 3 years old when the war started and 7 when the bombing of Nijmegen took place. Especially the fire after the bombing and the chaos impressed me terribly."

"Still, my goal in my life has always been to look forward. But you can never look forward if you don't know what happened behind you. And I also wanted to show young people that. That's how I ended up at the Freedom Museum as a guide, now about 14 years ago. There I saw the common ground with my youth: the bombing, the front city period and the liberation."

"I met Maria here, we are both of the same age. She experienced the bombing of Kleve, I experienced the bombing of Nijmegen. And that is ALSO the beauty of the Freedom Museum, that our German neighbors have just as much right to their grief and hope, and to talk about it."

"At the museum I still give the workshop 'Grandpas and grandmas tell'. I show young people that you don't just get freedom but that you have to work for it. And that you must always be vigilant. And now so many years later: how sad the images of Ukraine make me, what the population must go through because of all this enemy aggression. Let us support them: no peace without freedom. I remain hopeful."