Memorial hour in the church and “experience theater” in the alleys of Old Borne.
On April 2, 1945, Rheine’s twin town Borne was liberated from German occupation by British and Canadian troops. Last Saturday, what was actually planned two years ago to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of the war and the liberation of the Netherlands from German occupation, but was not feasible because of Corona, was made up for there: the official commemoration in the Oude Kerk and an open-air experience theater under the motto: Wartime & Liberation of Borne. A delegation of the Town Twinning Association Rheine was also invited to this ceremony and was welcomed as “friends” right at the beginning of the commemoration. In the following speeches the war time with its horrors, cruelties and restrictions for the “civil society” came back to life. However, all speeches also referred to the invasion of Ukraine, the still ongoing war of aggression by Russia and the many parallels with that time.
The mayor of Borne, Jan Pierik, put the importance of peace and freedom in the center of his speech, and reminded that especially Ukrainian refugees were offered a safe haven in Borne. After that, mainly contemporary witnesses or – by proxy – relatives had their say. A representative of the Jewish community brought to life the fear of discovery and deportation, the well-known resistance fighter Cor Hilbrink, leader and organizer of the resistance in the province of Overijssel, was remembered by his great-granddaughter, the nun Josephine organized the reception of refugees and those seeking help during the war days and hid them from the grasp of the occupying forces. In keeping with her motto, “Every person counts!” she affirmed her belief that all people “who live on Mother Earth are connected.” She made an urgent appeal to people’s willingness to help and called for helping those in distress wherever possible. At the end of the commemoration, the visitors’ breath caught: a siren sounded, air alarm. One suspected something bad. Mothers, children and elderly men rushed into the church, gathered around the priest and the altar to seek shelter from the bombs, just as they had 77 years ago.
This alarm was also at the same time the prelude and part of the experiential theater that followed at eleven stations – spread over the alleys of Old Borne. On the basis of stories and reports from the war days, people of Bornen of all ages, dressed in costumes from the 1945s, acted out scenes from everyday life, in which the atrocities of the war, from the confiscation of everyday goods, to the inadequate emergency medical care of the population in the military hospital, to the arbitrary liquidation of civilians, were once again impressively called to the conscience of all spectators: Never again war!
