2024 marks the 30th anniversary of the large-scale transformation of the ‘concrete’ Bijlmer district in Amsterdam. Much of the urban plan has been demolished or renovated. With the demolition, residents and former residents lost memories and their history was erased.

In the project Bijlmer Oral History, Liz Dautzenberg is researching, archiving and presenting this lost social history of the Amsterdam housing estate. The result is a collection of stories with personal memories of the rise and fall of the ‘original’ concrete Bijlmer (1968-1998), told through the eyes of its residents and former residents and presented in a digital environment.

This project is a first attempt to document the more recent and underexposed urban history of the Bijlmer from the inside and to present it in an accessible way. The aim is to promote and increase broader insights arising from the history.

This image and sound bank is the result of the oral history project of the same name that took place between 2007 and 2010.
During that period, historians, staff members and former staff members of the OPZ, volunteers and young people interviewed all kinds of witnesses about the last decades of the age-old Geel family nursing home. Listen to their stories, look at old photos and let a piece of family nursing history come to life!

Het verleden van de gezinsverpleging in Geel maakt onmiskenbaar deel uit  van het Vlaamse en zelfs internationale culturele erfgoed. Het doel van het project “Tussen de mensen… de spraakmakende geschiedenis van de Geelse gezinsverpleging.” is om aan de hand van interviews een collectie mondelinge bronnen  over de Geelse gezinsverpleging in al zijn aspecten aan te leggen en te valoriseren door diverse manieren van erfgoedontsluiting. Centraal staat de vraag hoe het was om in de gezinsverpleging te leven en/of te werken. Tezelfdertijd wil dit project ook zicht krijgen op particuliere collecties (foto’s, objecten, …) rond de thuisverpleging.

On February 4, 1997, exactly one month after the last Elfstedentocht and 5 days before Carnival, swine fever was detected on a farm in Boekel, Venhorst. Just as corona is referred to as “patient-zero,” this farm was “company-zero,” so to speak. As it turned out later, there were many more infections by then. And as with corona, the crisis was greater and the swine fever lasted much longer than everyone initially thought.
Together with three people involved at the time: the town clerk, a veterinarian and a pig farmer, we look back on the events that suddenly landed Boekel on the front pages of the national newspapers. Everyone who was there at the time will have their own story. We hope that the three personal stories in this article will prompt others not yet told to tell their stories as well.

Crisis in the Netherlands is based on 15 of 74 interviews from the oral history project (1974-1975) led by J.Talsma and P. de Rooy at the University of Amsterdam. Three additional interviews were done for the publication.

The following is said about the interview process: ‘The questions served to disturb the story as little as possible, on the contrary to stimulate the interviewees to retrieve memories they themselves considered important.’ 

It is written about this oral history project that it is a string of problems surrounding interviews (withdrawal of permissions, retrieval of audio tapes and so on), so the refusers inadvertently still provide an interesting picture of power relations in this community. (Ton Wagemakers in: Oral history – on theory and practice of using oral sources, pg. 34)

“Als je de lectuur leest van al die mijnbouwkundigen of die hoge pieteberen, dan zeg je: ‘Nou, dat is een heel aardige zaak, die mijnen!’ Maar kijk, ik geloof dat als je als generaal ergens in een frontoorlog een boek daarover schrijft, dat het dan een veel aardiger boek wordt, dan als die vent in de drek en de modder wat schrijft – die man die zijn eigen kameraden moet afmorksen.

“When you read the readings of all those mining experts or those high peeps, you say, ‘Well, that’s a very nice thing, those mines!’ But look, I believe that if, as a general somewhere in a front war, you write a book about that, it will be a much nicer book, than if the guy in the muck and mud writes something – that guy who has to afmork his own comrades.

That guy at the bottom, who just has to see it through to the top, and that guy behind his lavish desk, that’s quite a difference. The gentlemen’s reading on the history of the mining industry may be nice, but it is very different from if I were writing the history of the mines. And you may quietly know from me that I read such books by those gentlemen with mixed feelings.”

Wim Nijsten (former miner), Jos Bours (dramatist) and Marlies Hautvast (community worker) asked sixty former miners in Limburg about their lives and their work. This book is the result. It became a history from below; a book that can be read as a novel, and as an introduction to economics. Not a raunchy commemorative book, but stories to remember.

From the Culinary Historical Heritage Centre, we research and publish the importance of food preservation. The importance of preserving agricultural surpluses this within the framework of corporate social responsibility. Sustainability is of paramount importance.

Lekker voor later wants to investigate which methods are left over from the generation that dealt with this. And which techniques are still used today. Is this still possible in multicultural Netherlands. Orally transmitted stories play a major role in this. These stories are recorded in a book “Alleen de geur blijft hangen. Een herinnering aan een eetmoment”.

This richly illustrated book will undoubtedly get the stamp of Culinary Heritage. And rightly so. The Culinary History Cooking Museum in Appelscha, following a successful call for responses, has collected over six years of personal memories of a food moment. This has yielded a wealth of delicious stories and recipes. The result is a book featuring many authors from all over the Netherlands. They chronicled historical experiences of unforgettable food moments during the war, holidays and special family events such as births, marriages and deaths. Complete with accompanying photographic material.

No scientific research preceded this unique, valuable book. Trends and tradition are filled in from lore by the authors. Lively, emotional, traditional, surprising and occasionally disconcerting. You will find it all in this unique book, a document to cherish.

In the past, stories about the early days of the polder have been collected in the Northeast Polder and Eastern Flevoland. In Southern Flevoland, the urgency was less because that part of Flevoland was the last to be reclaimed, in 1968, and the people of the first hour were a lot younger than the pioneers from the Northeast Polder. But still more than 50 years ago.

In 2018, Landschapsbeheer Flevoland launched the Oral History Zeewolde project. In cooperation with volunteers and the municipality of Zeewolde, the story of Zeewolde was recorded by conducting a total of 30 interviews. Interviewed were the first inhabitants of the area that is now the municipality of Zeewolde. From gamekeepers to farmers and from the first general practitioner to the first inhabitant of the new village of Zeewolde. 

The stories of these polder pioneers led to the writing of a book by Lenie Hanse.

Excerpts from the interviews are published at Flevolands Geheugen. You can read some excerpts here.

Historian Lenie Hanse-Bolle collected the most beautiful stories and provided them with text in Zover je kijk was er niets. Eyewitnesses about the history of the Flevoland landscape.

The vision of exploiters and first inhabitants on the landscape and nature of our special province continues to fascinate. Reason enough for Landschapsbeheer Flevoland to make a StoryMap of their stories, which can be viewed digitally by everyone. 

‘As far as you looked there was nothing’ attractively takes the reader into the story of the reclamation and development of Flevoland. By clicking on an intelligent map, the reader is stimulated with text, photos, multimedia and interactive features. An ideal way to empathize at home with the pioneers who made Flevoland what it is today.

What did the reclaimed seabed look like? What grew first? When and how did animals come to the new land? What is it like to farm on newly reclaimed seabed and what did the young landscape look like?

Find the answers to these and other questions about nature and landscape in the early days of the Northeast Polder and Eastern Flevoland.

Museum the Treasure of Simpelveld uses oral history to record the stories of the convent’s last nuns.

Discover the horticultural past of Destelbergen, Lochristi, Melle, Merelbeke, Oosterzele and Sint-Lievens-Houtem! Uit goeie grond introduces you to the past of flower farms, tree nurseries and chicory growing through a number of tourist experience elements!

Relive the horticultural past via interactive audio points and cycling and walking routes in the region.

• Georgette Collin
• Jacques Sonneville
• Marc Roggeman
• André Baert
• Cecile De Pauw
• Vien Floré
• Philippe Nimmegeers
• zuster Marguerita
• Carlo De Cooman
• Jean-Pierre Bouckaert
• Simonne Van De Kerkhove-Volckaert
• Noël De Neve
• Adrien Rahoens
• Charel Van De Slijke
• Antoine Van De Keere
• André Paerewijck
• Herman D’Hauwers