Dutch war graves RK graveyard Megchelen

Hendrikus Theodorus (Hent) Visser and Antoon Tervoert are buried at the RC cemetery in Megchelen. They were killed by landmines on April 26, 1945, left by the German army. on the way back to Germany .

Mies Neuhaus (1911-1948) was in charge of the emergency hospital in Megchelen.
Everyone helped in Megchelen. Food was cooked en masse and clothing was collected, because many of the men from Rees were still wearing the clothes in which they left. The sick were first received in a house and later in the village school, where an average of 140 men were treated per day. For the most part, according to one former camp resident, they were "men whose clothing were so soiled that even a blind man with a cold nose would run away".

After initial relief, patients were often transferred to emergency hospitals in neighboring villages such as Gendringen, Ulft, Silvolde and Harreveld, or helped home with false papers, whereby the IJssel, with heavily guarded or bombed-out bridges, formed a major obstacle.

Mies Neuhaus was in charge of the hospital in Megchelen. Her father was German and her mother Dutch. She was a teacher, worked in Hazerswoude and came back to Megchelen after the war. When the emergency hospital was set up to receive forced laborers, she volunteered and was soon put in charge. Together with other young women from Megchelen, Mies led the emergency hospital with "superhuman dedication".
The symbolism of the village's commitment is repeated in the funerary monument for Mies Neuhaus.

However, soon after the liberation Mies Neuhaus became seriously ill. She died in 1948, after several blood transfusions, in a hospital in Arnhem; officially from leukemia, but it is generally believed that she was infected from her intensive contact with sick forced laborers. Due to a lack of money, not a stone was placed on her grave in the cemetery.

Mies Neuhaus was also honored in 2011, with a magnificent grave monument by Piet Sluiter in which the relief action of the other monument repeats itself. According to a memorial plaque at the grave, 1700 men from Rees were received by her.

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Source

• Text: Henny van Loenen & Maarten Koudijs
• Photos: Arjan Vrieze (1, 2, 3), Maarten Koudijs (4, 5)