Arnhem.

Hey everyone it’s already week two of our project In Their Own words!!! 

This week I got to speak to an amazing individual. I interviewed Gerry Goldman, who was a aircraft mechanic during WW2! Gerry also recently celebrated his 99th birthday! 

Interviewing Gerry was amazing, He explained so well what he experienced and taught me facts and information about WW2 that I wouldn’t have understood from other forms of research. Gerry mentioned tons of interesting places while he told his story, one that stuck out to me specifically was Arnhem. Which Gerry mentioned he visited to see some of his elementary school classmates who had passed away during the war. I thought since this place is important to Gerry and his story I should do some extra research. Here’s what I found out..,  Arnhem is a town in the Netherlands. During the Second World War the battle of Arnhem took place there. The cemetery Gerry was referring to is the Arnhem Oosterbeek War cemetery.
To understand the cemetery better I looked at this video.

Watching the video gave me a better idea of what the Cemetery means to people specifically to the people that live near it. It also showed me who Arnhem is a place of hope as well as a place of remembrance. After understanding Arnhem a little better I wanted to learn more about its history.

I found out that the Arnhem Oosterbeek cemetery was where all allied soldiers (that were found) were buried. In total 1770 allied soldiers are buried there. Despite many soldiers who were lost due to the battle of Arnhem many to this day have not been found. Over the years soldiers have been found around Arnhem, this is mostly due to the fact that the bodies were not located and buried properly until a year after the battle.  

Despite the cemetery’s slightly disorganized beginning its a beautiful memorial, which does an amazing job at remembering fallen allied soldiers.

I’m glad I looked more into Arnhem this week, now I can use my extra research as a example in my podcast episode. Arnhem is a great example of a consequence of WW2, Im excited to include it in my episode!

Until next week, Kaia