Dutch War Graves Huizumer Cemetery Leeuwarden

On Huizumer Cemetery in Leeuwarden a number of executed members of the resistance have been buried and also some victims of the concentration camps who perished.
In some of the graves also the spouse has been buried later on.

There are graves with a text in the Frisian language:

RJOCHT EN FRIJDOM WEITSJE'
FALLEN YN 'E STRIID
TSJIN ÛNRJOCHT EN SLAVERNIJ
DAT WIJ YN FREDE FOAR

This can approximately be translated as follows:
"Fallen in the battle against injustice and slavery, lest we are alert in peace for right and freedom".
It is an awarded quote from J. de Vries from Balk.

POEM 'CEMETERY IN HUIZUM' BY WILLEM VAN TOORN
On June 17, 2023, a poetry tableau with a beautiful poem by the poet Willem van Toorn was revealed during the Open Day (due to the 100th anniversary of the Huizumer cemetery). This was done by driving away a bier above that poem by alderman Gijs Jacobse and poet Willem van Toorn, who came over separately from his hometown in France for this purpose.
Historian Leendert Plaisier and initiator Peter de Haan (Stichting Poëzietableaus Leeuwarden) also gave a speech about the jubilee or the poem that contains an ode to the Allied airmen who are buried here. They died in a crash in December 1943. The villagers are also mentioned who had to commemorate these allied pilots a year later, so still during WWII.
The poem is now part of the unique Leeuwarden poetry route (see www.poezieroute.nl).
Below is the text of the poem (English translation by David McKay):

Cemetery in Huizum

Lord. Where you're standing. Look, right there, among
a century of Buwaldas, Algras, Sixmas, Slauerhoffs
and the other dead they lie, five shot out of the sky,
not angels but men, barely more than boys,

who, on their airborne way to the city of hate
where in the bright moonlight they meant to drop
their bombs were brutally shot down
and absorbed into the earth. We still welcome for now

in this earthly life, are well aware
they're no longer here. But also that words
can turn around time if we wish them to
and make them present—as the villagers knew,

nearly eighty years ago, when they decided
to honor their memory, their heads held high
against evil. Without fear. You, standing here,
look. Read the names. Be their army.


Translation: David McKay

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Source

• Text: Mia van den Berg
• Photos: Nico Nienhuis