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Het verdriet van Roermond - deel 1 & 2

Documentary, 2005, 50 min.

Documentary in four parts about the execution by the German authorities of fourteen men in Roermond in 1944, and the consequences this event still has for their relatives. Director Louis van Gasteren worked on the film between 1975 and 2004, interviewing both Dutch and German people involved. Friends and relatives of the victims feel rather disowned by historiography. Loe de Jong, for instance, writes that the resistance in the south of the country did not amount to much. Roermond was in the frontline at the time; old photographs give an impression of the scale of the devastation. `What you see in Sarajevo now', a woman says, `doesn't impress me. Things looked the same over here.' In great detail, using eyewitnesses, historians and documents, Van Gasteren reconstructs the events of that day, the subsequent evacuation of the city and the attempts to bring the responsible commander, Ulrich Matthaeas, to trial. In the final part, we see how Dutchmen and Germans nowadays strive for reconciliation.

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