During
events our group tries to re-enact many different sides of the Dutch
occupation.
What we are going to re-enact depends on the nature of the event, we
can organise a history lesson at school or walk around at public Living
History events.
At these events hundreds and sometimes thausands of re-enactors bring
history back to life.
Soldiers set up camp for the night, jeeps and tanks drive by, troops
march and the public walks trough all this. As if they are a timemachine
tourist!
At these events we try to
show the public the other, often forgotten side of World War Two, it
wasn't all wars, battles and soldiers.
We want to educate people about civilians and daily life in Occupied
Holland.
But how do you do this if you haven't lived trough the war yourself?
We
try to act out our WW2 persona as accurate as possible.
We wear vintage clothing, we talk and act
as people did back then and by carrying 1940's items with us we hope
we can show the public a bit more about life in wartorn Holland.
We walk around all this
military display acting as evcacuees, we hand out emergency rations,
let Germans check our paperwork, celebrate the liberation, etc, etc.
But our most important task is answering the questions we get from the
audience.
People can ask unything, with pleasure we tell them more about our clothing,
our paperwork or what we are doing.
They may even go trough our suitcases and bags if they want to!
People ask us the strangest things and every time again we realise how
little people really know about this recent bit of history.
It shows us that is it important that we and many other re-enactors
continue wih Living History.