Small chronicle of three Dutch families

Truska Bast chose oral history to find out what it meant to people, those events in history.

For the farmer’s son Ko it was a true migration of people when in 1919 he took a steam train with cows and hay from South Holland to the Veluwe. The family lived in abject poverty. How different it is on the island of Wieringen, where Pieter, the son of a superintendent of the Department of Public Works, stays around 1920 with the German Crown Prince Wilhelm, who is exiled to the island. Or on Java, where Sien’s Indo-Dutch father father fathered eighteen children with two native women and Sien was placed with her sisters in the Protestant Orphanage.
In En zij die na ons komen we read how Ko, Pieter and Sien are doing in 2010 – and what has become of their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Through these three families Truska Bast describes how life in the Netherlands has changed in one hundred years. The result is a compelling and colorful document of the time.

For the podcast The Pool Club, Annegriet Wietsma used oral history

Annegriet, with the memories of protagonist George in her pocket, will explore whether she can check his story (fact-check) with stories of other possible (eye) witnesses, in archives and at locations. In other words, a search for the truth of a hidden past.

George grows up in post-war Amsterdam, in a poor family. He roams the streets a lot. To earn some extra money, he scavenges with interested male passers-by. He is approached by a kind photographer who allows the lad to pose in exchange for money. Naked. The photographer also takes him to a public swimming pool where working-class kids are allowed to swim occasionally for an evening. And then the story takes a bizarre turn.

“Well… and then came the pool club. That you had to swim in the nude. And that there were grown-ups who appreciated that. And then there was always money in your jacket pocket. Five guilders or so.”

In this interview you can read more about Annegriet Wietsma’s motivation to start making this series and the role of oral history.

The Pool Club is a podcast by NTR, created with support from the NPO fund and the Fonds Bijzondere Journalistieke Projecten and can be listened to via the website and app of NPO Radio 1, the free NPO Luister app and other podcast platforms.

The story is partly based on the book Verboden Photos; an Amsterdam Novel, Helmut van de Berg (pseudonym), Uitg Gigaboek, 2005-2019

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.