Last Wednesday, July 15, we had a guest in the studio: Peter Froon (Utrecht, August 22, 1943) from Krimpen aan den IJssel. Peter is a volunteer at NIOD and digitizes diaries.
He taught for more than 40 years at the VMBO department (at the time this was called LBO) of the SG Melanchthon in Rotterdam-Schiebroek, where he worked until the age of 65. There he taught administrative subjects: office practice, computer accounting and business administration and general economics. The last 15 years he was a team leader superstructure associated with the management team.
About 3 years ago, Peter read a message from the Rotterdam Archives on the internet: they were looking for volunteers to digitize detainees' cards, which had been filled in by the Rotterdam police during the war years 1941-1945. These were found again at the time, but had to be digitized because otherwise they would not be accessible to interested parties. He found that very interesting! They then digitized many thousands of these maps with a large group of volunteers (after receiving proper instruction from the archive on how to deal with this) and the results can be found on the internet in the archive.
Peter: “Thanks to our many years of effort, the archive has arranged a nice excursion for us to the NIOD in Amsterdam. It is very nice to hear from the scientists there how important this work has been to make this information accessible. I also spoke to an employee who had written a book about the role of the national police during the Second World War. I told her that my Uncle Koos, who was an agent with the Utrecht police during the war years, was ordered to pick up Jewish citizens for deportation to Westerbork. He did not want to have anything to do with this and then immediately went into hiding with a farming family in the Achterhoek. She thought that was very special and also told me that they were digitizing War Diaries with a group of volunteers. Retrieved or donated by family after the war after the deaths of the authors involved. She asked me if I would like to join this group. Of course I said yes. ”
In Amsterdam, Peter and other volunteers were given an extensive instruction day and a NIOD access coding so that he could access this data from home. Amazingly interesting and very educational. They are first-hand stories written by people who survived. Anne Frank is not the only one who has noted the facts of her observation under harsh circumstances and with its dramatic end, but the most famous of course. The diaries he has been working on to date have been noted by people from all walks of life. Jewish people, entrepreneurs, soldiers and so on.
Peter: “I am now working on a diary of a soldier who was taken prisoner of war during the Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies and sent to a prison camp on the Burma railway and had to work there under bizarre circumstances. Immediately I remembered the movie The bridge over the River Kwai that I saw in the cinema at the time. So now I'm digitizing an eyewitness report from someone who worked on the Burma railway. It's even more terrible than anything I've seen on that movie back then. ”
A comprehensive item about their important work was presented on the NOS news a few months ago. Peter recently received an article from the NIOD about a one-page article in The New York Times, who wrote an extensive article about this. They wrote about the group of Dutch volunteers who were working on this mammoth job. The volunteers are handling many thousands of diaries (bigger and smaller).
Listen the complete broadcast of Radio 6:
[AUDIO 184 Peter Froon digitizes diaries for the NIOD]
© 2020 Lokale Omroep Krimpen
Source: Original article (Dutch)
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