Almost every Dutch city has street names that refer to the Second World War, the German occupation and the resistance against it. It is often not avoided how dark that period of oppression was, but in Groningen this goes further than average. The city has, among other things, an Occupation Avenue, Deportation Street, Hostage Street, Invasion Street and Illegality Street.
Kina, who lived on Invasiestraat, did not experience the German invasion itself, but the occupation certainly left its mark on her life. “I was born in 1944 in a house on Folkingestraat that my parents had given me,” she says on the street. The Jewish Zimet family lived at the address, but they had fled the Netherlands.
Kina is happy with the street names. “That past has been so far-reaching, we should not brush it away.” Yet she fears that awareness of the German occupation will diminish once the last eyewitnesses have died. “Then it just becomes something you learn at school. And people will no longer enjoy living in a Deportation Street.”
Yet she sometimes has trouble with the street names. “Now that there is so much war in the world, I find it difficult to live in a neighborhood that refers to war,” she says. “I am confronted with it too much.”
The Invasiestraat ends at the Laan van de Vrede, where number 1 is very strikingly home to a Vluchtelingenwerk office. Alie Smallenburg-Hielkema, born in 1934 (“in the La Liberté residential tower”), also lives on this street, whom we meet on Bezettingslaan with her daughter on the way to a hairdresser’s visit. Her wartime childhood is still clear in her mind. “As a child I was terribly afraid of the Germans and my father spent two days in the Scholtenhuis,” she says, referring to the infamous SD headquarters nicknamed the ‘vestibule of hell’.
She thinks it is good that the street names are reminiscent of this period, “people should know that,” says Smallenburg-Hielkema. “Hopefully it will arouse curiosity.” She explains how Canadalaan got its name. “The Canadian liberators actually came from that direction, although they mainly drove over the [hieraan parallel gelegen] Paterswoldeweg, I saw them come in.” If you follow Canadalaan you will arrive at Overwinningsplein.
Interesting detail: Groningen had an NSB mayor from 1943 to 1945. This ‘farmer’ Pé Tammens (1898-1986) was arrested after the liberation and was released early in 1951. He bought an apartment with his wife… the Laan van de Vrede.
On the other side of the provincial road leading to the A7 is a second neighborhood with street names around the German occupation. An inverted Dutch flag with a farmer’s handkerchief as a pennant flies on Verzetsfighterslaan. “It’s not right,” reads a poster behind the window. A local resident with “only one minute of time” has no idea what the street names refer to. “Something about the war,” she guesses correctly before she has to continue.
This applies to more passers-by and it does not surprise Jonas Boekhoven (19), who studies at the Noorderpoort Art & Multimedia school on Verzetsrijderslaan. “There is far too little talk about that past, even in our citizenship lessons,” he says outside during his break. “That surprised me at an art school like this.” The street names don’t mean much to him. “Holocaust denial is increasing and more and more people are against democracy and in favor of dictators. So awareness of that past is increasingly disappearing.”
A vast field between Verzetsfighterslaan and Illegaliteitslaan is aptly called Droppingsveld. A group of students are sitting on a bench, sort of secretly smoking. The reporter walks around via Sabotagelaan and Onder duikersstraat to Illegaliteitslaan. “Nowadays that is associated with something else, so I sometimes get questions when I give my address,” says Wim, who has lived in the street for twenty years, from his shed. Furthermore, the name doesn’t really mean anything to him. “It’s a long word, a lot can go wrong with spelling.”
After the liberation, the municipal council actually wanted to name the streets after important resistance fighters, writes historian Christiaan Gevers. However, members of the then influential former resistance could not agree on which heroes the streets should be named after. These ‘neutral’ names were then chosen – although Groningen is the only municipality with, for example, a Deportation Street. The city now has streets named after resistance fighters Casper Naber and Wil van Zwieteren.
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