Press release
The urban Remembrance Day ceremony will take place on Saturday, May 4, on the Domplein in Utrecht. The ceremony is traditionally preceded by a silent procession from the Pieterskerkhof.
After the two minutes of silence, Mayor Sharon Dijksma will speak and then lay a wreath at the resistance monument together with Jantien Verlaan-Das. Jantien Verlaan-Das is the daughter of the Utrecht resistance fighter Henk Das, who was, among other things, provincial leader of the National Organization for Aid to Hiders during WWII.
From 8:30 PM, the Utrecht poet and writer Ingmar Heytze will perform in the Dom Church together with his band Asphalt Fairies. At the request of the Utrecht 4 May Commemoration Committee, Heytze wrote a musical recital ‘Who will come up with stories tomorrow?’
Heytze: ‘Leo Vroman (1915-2014, ed.) wrote the beautiful lines: ‘Come tonight with stories / how the war has disappeared, / and repeat them a hundred times: / I will cry every time. The presentation ‘Who will come up with stories tomorrow?’ is about the turning point from remembering to commemorating, about the power of stories and poems, and about the many reasons why we tell what we tell. After all, with every story you tell, you tell a different story not.’
The poet only discovered at the end of last year that his father had mainly told him the exciting, boys’ book-like stories about his Second World War, while there also turned out to be a story that he could not or did not want to tell.
On May 4 we commemorate the Dutch victims who fell for our freedom in the Netherlands and on peace missions during and after the Second World War. On May 5 we celebrate the liberation in Utrecht, organized by the Liberation Festival in Transwijk park and in the library on the Neude. Finally, Utrecht celebrates the liberation of the city on May 7 in the Hogelandsepark at the Polar Bear (at the end of Biltstraat).
Tags: Program commemoration Domplein News030
