Tours of WWII sites in Holland
 

Does anyone know of day tours out of Amsterdam that would cover some of the WWII monuments and history - escpecially around Leeuwarden?

Frankly BrendaLS I am not aware of any WWII monuments near Leeuwarden that are worth visiting. Is there any particular reason that you would like to go there?

There is the Kazematten museum at the Friesland end of the Afsluitdijk. Their website isn't working and seems to be only in Dutch, but it is open Wednesday to Saturday from 10 to 5 may through October. It is an interesting place and shows a little known part of Dutch history.

The Verzetsmuseum Friesland is part of the Fries museum in Leeuwarden and has the story of the Resistance and their website has a list of war graves in Friesland. I haven't been to the museum so can't say what it is like. www.verzetsmuseum.nl

Although obviously Friesland was under the Germans like the rest of the Netherlands I'm not sure there is a lot of WW2 sites there. I go to Friesland a lot as my son lives there, but I can't say I have seen to much WW2 history there, but then I haven't been looking.

One very important site in Drenthe, not so far from Leeuwarden, is the Westerbork transit camp - which is where Anne Frank was first moved to, before being transported to Germany. http://www.kampwesterbork.nl/welcome/

There is lots of history in Friesland and plenty to do, but I'm just not sure there is much connected to WW2 I'm afraid.

For day trips from Amsterdam you would be better off heading for Arnhem and Oosterbeek and the Airborne museum http://www.airbornemuseum.org/, which you could do by public transport.

I wanted to go to Leeuwarden because I have a picture of my Dad standing on the street there in May of 1945. He served in the Canadian army. I think it was just after it was leberated

Ah that makes sense! Then you will enjoy the museum there which has some stuff on the liberation.
Getting to Leeuwarden by train takes nearly 2 and a half hours, and involves a change at Amersfoort. It is not a cheap journey either - €42.20 return.
If their is more than just you going consider renting a small car for the day. You can then go over the Afsluitdijk and visit the Kazematten museum too if you wish. It takes about 90 minutes by car from Amsterdam to Leeuwarden.

It's not a museum but there are some weathered German pill boxes overlooking the sea on Scheveningen Beach, The Hague.

When are you going to The Netherlands? I ask as sometimes there are "celebrations" held in either remembrance of the fallen or the liberation of the country.
http://www.bevrijdingsmuseum.nl/basis.aspx?Tid=746

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntre...readID=1818743

Hello Brenda

Leeuwarden was liberated in mid-April 1945 by the 3rd Canadian Division without any fighting, after which the Division moved eastward into Germany where it was when the war ended in early May. Following the liberation, most of Friesland was occupied by the 5th Armoured Division, so it's likely that your father was part of that formation when his photo was taken in May 1945 in Leeuwarden. If you know what specific unit your father served in, I can perhaps suggest some places to visit that might be personally significant to you.

As hetismij advised, you would be best to rent a car for the day, as getting to the various sites of interest for a day trip from Amsterdam could be difficult by train. Some places of general interest to Canadians in the north-east Netherlands would be the Canadian CWGC Cemetery at Holten and the Westerbork Camp, mentioned by hetismij, which was liberated by the 2nd Canadian Division in April 1945. Further south, there is the Canadian CWGC Cemetery at Groesbeek (just outside Nijmegen) and in that town you can also visit the National Liberation Museum. http://www.bevrijdingsmuseum.nl/basis.aspx?Tid=746

There are also a number of places of interest to Canadians in the Scheldt in the western Netherlands, but if your father was in the 5th Armoured Division he would have been in Italy at the time of that battle.

Thanks so much for the information! My Dad was in the 18th armoured car regiment of the 12th Manitoba Dragoons. I have some information on where he went - in Holland he was in Roosendaal, Breda, Oudenbosch, Megan, Appeltern, Cleve, Oldenburg, Leeuwarden, Westerberg Kazerene(Germany?), Oldenzaal and Amersfoort. between Sept of 44 and Oct of 45. I'm not sure if the spelling is correct for all. He was also in Belgium and France and we are going there as well. I think I will try the car rental idea for Holland.

We are going to Holland July 8 to 10 btw

Brenda

Well, my supposition that your father might have served with the 5th Armoured Division was wrong. The 12th Manitoba Dragoons, also known as the 18th Armoured Car Regiment, were the reconnaissance regiment of the 2nd Canadian Corps and fought from Normandy in July 1944 through to Germany where it was near Oldenburg when the war ended. As the Corps reconnaissance regiment they would have been widely employed in support of all the 5 divisions of the Corps, including the 3rd Division which liberated Leeuwarden. (The 5th Armoured Division was part of 1st Canadian Corps, so the regiment would not have been involved with its operations).

I came across an interesting account of a member of the regiment, which gives its locations and dates from the time it was mobilized in 1941. You may well be familiar with it.

http://www.12mbdragoons.com/ferguson.html

From this one can see that the Regiment was indeed in Leeuwarden in May 1945 but only briefly before it moved to the Westerberg Kazerne, a barracks outside of the city of Deventer, and then to Oldenzaal near the German border to await its return to Canada in October 1945.

The following is a very comprehensive listing of memorials, cemeteries, museums and the like which have to do with the Second World War in Europe. For the Netherlands, you can choose a province to see all the sites by city or town. You might find it useful to track down sites where your father might have served to see what there is of interest.

http://www.ww2museums.com/country.asp?countryid=1

I'll have a further look to see if I can find anything else specifically about the 12 Manitoba Dragoons in the Netherlands.

laverendrye that is a useful website! A great resource, thankyou.

They do not, however, have a complete list of war graves in Friesland - there are six in the churchyard at Kimswerd, which id I remember correctly are those of Canadian Airforce men.

hetismij

The website has a form for submitting additional entries. This is obviously one which should be included and I'm sure the organizers would welcome your contribution.

laverendrye - Thank you for the most excellent website link for the WW2 memorials. I started putting together a list of sites to visit during our next trip to Amsterdam in April 2011. This will be our 8th journey to the city, so we have already seen most of the popular sites, and are now looking for the off-the-beaten-track things to see and do. The website is the perfect resource for helping with my quest.

About 10 years ago I stumbled across a website which listed Amsterdam's 10,000 pieces of free artwork. As I read through the listings, the name Hildo Krop kept popping up, as a sculptor. So that particular trip to Amsterdam turned into the Hildo Krop Tour. Unfortunately, I can't find the website anymore.

Anyway, thanks for the link. We'll be doing a WW2 Memorial Tour on our next trip.

Robyn :)>-

Hildo Krop Tour.............maybe one of these?
http://www.zuidelijkewandelweg.nl/ar...uggenroute.htm
http://www.hildokrop.nl/index.php?menu_id=1
http://www.arcam.nl/index.lhtml?lang...6266MXu4073103

Hetismij this slightly off the subject question is for you.
You may or may not know the answer but here it is anyway:

Until now I have never heard of Leeuwarden in Holland, but when I read these posts I pricked up my ears. If there is such a village/town, do you think is possible my family on my fathers side could have originated from there as I used to be a Miss van der Leeuw before I married?

tod, Leeuwarden is a city, the capital of Friesland. Van der Leeuw probably comes from there, given the high number of people with that name in Friesland.

http://www.publicprofiler.org/worldnames/Main.aspx may be of interest to you.

Robyn let me know if your around next year :).

Very many thanks Hetismij - might just start looking into my Family Tree!

ribeirasacra - Thanks for the links. I'll be printing out the "bruggenroute" to do on our next visit to Amsterdam. I dug out my notes from 2003 and found the link to the 10,000 pieces of free art work, but it's not valid anymore. dds.nl/~afk/beelden/english.html It appears the list was put together buy the Amsterdam Art Fund.

hetismij - We are looking at April 12-21, 2011 for our return to Amsterdam. We will definately be organizing a GetToGether. It will be me, my husband B.J., our friend Roger (again), and 3-6 additional friends that will be travelling this time.

Brenda - Sorry to take over your thread. I can appreciate your desire to travel to Leeuwarden, to trace your father's footsteps. We did a trip to Germany, and spent the day in the little village that my 8th GreatGrandparents came from, just so I could walk on the same streets, and feel the history of my ancestors. Have a wonderful time on your journey.

Robyn :)>-

My late father also served with the XII Manitoba Dragoons. He commanded B squadron and was there for the liberation of Leeuwarden. I have a photograph of him and the other Dragoons in front of the Justice Hall, taken after the fall of Germany. A dream trip of mine would be to visit Leeuwarden. They were closing in on Bremen, Germany at the time of the surrender.

If so then 2018 would be the year to go as Leeuwarden will be cultural capital of Europe then.

http://www.2018.nl/

Apart from the Resistance Museum hetismij mentioned, the Frisian archives (Tresoar) hold much material, as does the Fries Scheepvaart Museum in Sneek, about other Canadian regiments that were stationed in Friesland at war's end. For instance, the Perth Regiment was a big presence in Sneek, other regiments in Franeker (from which my mother has inherited her love of regimental pipe bands)

But I think you'll also find that as you uncover the story about Canadian regiments, you'll also uncover the story of Friesland in resistance, and for that the Resistance Museum is the place to go.

This is a five year old thread.

It is a five year old thread, but it is the kind of thing that makes the Internet and forums like this wonderful to me.

Through the kindness of strangers -- yourself included -- people made contact at multiple levels with their families and history and all of us learned more than most of us knew about Friesland.

My sister went to a lot of trouble to post online some pictures of a party at the officers' club at RAF Brize Norton when it was an American base in the 1050's. The daughter of the base commander saw his picture, and I was able to identify another officer who had been a hero in the Pacific in WWII. As that generation ends, anything we can identify and preserve about them for posterity is worthwhile, even if it is only grave sites.

Not to high jack this thread, but was Friesland the setting of the film "The Black Book" or was that elsewhere?

I know, hetismij, but the information in it is very valuable. And yes, Ackislander, I agree.
The setting of Black Book was the the area around Biesbosch, so the Merwede and Meuse rivers.

This film, De Overval, is the quintessential film about Frisian resistance, the raid on the Leeuwarden prison to free a number of resistance prisoners. Incidentally, its main actor, Rob de Vries, was both jewish and a resistance hero in his own right, so it was only fitting he got to play the lead character.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKid2pxw6VI

It's in Dutch, no subtitles, sorry.