Tainted History

Apeldoorn’s history also has its dark pages — the massive German presence in Apeldoorn from 1943 onwards is a prime example. It’s a tainted piece of history that has never received much attention, while the dramatic events in the last two years of the war had a significant impact on Apeldoorn and the Veluw. The website www.beladengeschiedenis-apeldoorn.nl and this audio tour make visible the dark pages of Apeldoorn’s past on locations in and around Apeldoorn, which are related to the German presence and Dutch National Socialism.

The stories you’re going to hear on this tour are painful, sometimes shameful, but always important. You’ll hear about criminal officials, militant followers, and people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. You will also discover that the war wasn’t a time of simple rights and wrongs, but a period full of difficult choices and gray areas. In this audio tour we will introduce you to, among other, the Reichscommisar, a senior civil servant, a photojournalist, and a typist; all people who operated on the wrong side of history. Eyewitnesses take you along a four-kilometer-long route through Apeldoorn’s tainted history. You will pass villas where the German powers established themselves in this city and see monuments that commemorate the consequences of the war, ending at the former bunker of Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Reichskommisar of the occupied Netherlands.

The stories we hear today are not the tales of heroes, yet they are still an essential part of history. Instead of ignoring these painful stories, we have to remember them. By shedding light on this tainted history, a more diverse, realistic, and interesting picture of the past emerges, inviting us to engage in conversation with each other.

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