During his vacation at my place, Roy and I visited some WWII related spots like the museum "Liberating Wings" at Best and the concentration camp Fort Breendonk in Belgium. The visit of that camp made a huge impression on Roy.
Left: Roy at the execution square of the concentration camp. On the right site you can see the gallows and on the left site of the photo you can see the wooden poles were the prisoners were shot.
Roy told me that during the war he never had the opportunity to get an impression of such a concentration camp because they had to move on to the next mission immediately after they had entered a camp. He could not imagine that people were able to do such horrible things or that there still are people who deny that this ever happened. He said:"It would be a good thing for some ones education to visit a place like this at least once in their life time."
Above right: On one of the facades on the Market square in Eindhoven an art work remembers the liberation by the allied forces on sept. 18th. 1944. It is made at the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation in 1994. It symbolizes two hands carrying a burning torch.
The text:"Who asks for freedom must give freedom to the other."
Left: Roy in center of Eindhoven. At the background the steeples of the Catharina-church that also is to be seen in the TV-series Band of Brothers©
This was one of the streets the Allies passed from a village called Valkenswaard (South of Eindhoven) on their way to the North (Arnhem): the so called "Hell's Highway" During the first days of the Eindhoven liberation the soldiers rested in front of that church. See the inserted photo above.
©Peter van de Wal
