Tweet09-07-2010 om 17:01 by Sueli Brodin

One of my earliest memories is waking up in the middle of the night on my father’s shoulders during an air-raid alarm in Pakistan. He was carrying me to safety in the downstairs lodgings of the Pakistani family who lived with us. My mother was walking next to us, holding my baby brother in her arms and our Pakistani housekeeper, Gulam, was carrying my little sister. Then I closed my eyes again, pretending to sleep, because I didn’t want my father to put me down and let me walk.


Underground bomb shelter in Maastricht

Although I was only four years old at the time of the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971, some incidents have stayed engraved in my memory, like the time when I accidentally switched on the light during curfew and was so afraid that our house might be spotted and bombed because of my mistake.



My following experience of war was an indirect one a few years later in Japan, when a Vietnamese girl joined our class in the middle of the schoolyear and started telling everyone all sorts of gruesome stories about her family’s history. She told us for example that she had witnessed soldiers chopping off her mother’s head and explained that it had taken a long time to sew it back together. I couldn’t make sense of her stories and even suspected her of making them up.

I first heard of the Cold War when we moved to France in 1976. The thought that a Russian rocket was pointed at every major city in Western Europe was terrifying. My sister and I would call out the names of all the potential targets we could think of and every time my father would answer: “Yes, that one probably too.”



Table to keep track of number of nuclear explosions


For many years, we had long and tense conversations at the dinner table about the danger of a third world war, the difference between an atomic bomb and a neutron bomb, the significance of the Berlin Wall, the existence of a Red Telephone between Washington and Moscow. We felt comforted by the fact that in the case of an impending war in Europe, we would all hopefully be able to seek refuge with my mother’s family in Brazil.

I was very sensitive to media headlines evoking the nuclear threat because I had grown up in the knowledge that my grandmother’s family in Japan had narrowly escaped being wiped out by the atomic bomb that fell on Hiroshima in 1945.

A Russian invasion and occupation was also a frightening thought, although my father always reminded us half-jokingly that he could speak Russian and that this would certainly be helpful.

I’m not sure why I decided to travel back to Israel in December 1990, against my parents’ warning, at a time when a conflict in the Gulf seemed inevitable. I had spent the previous summer on a kibbutz north of Tel Aviv and wanted to return there for another few months, regardless of what could happen in case of a war. The recklessness of youth.



Gas masks

That’s where I met my Dutch husband to be. We were both among the 20 international volunteers who continued working at Kibbutz Ramat Hakovesh during the first Gulf War in the winter of 1991. At every alarm, we would run to the sealed rooms and wait for instructions on the radio. We were told to keep our gas masks at hand all day long because a chemical skud attack could happen at any time. One day I overheard a small child asking her mother: “Why is Saddam Hussein sending skuds from his kibbutz to our kibbutz?”

These are some of the stories I was reminded of a few weeks ago when I visited the underground bomb shelter at the Minister Goeman Borgesiusplantsoen in Maastricht.



Beds and benches in the bomb shelter

The shelter was built in WWII to provide safety to local residents during air raid alarms and was used on numerous occasions, especially towards the end of the war.



The underground tunnels in Maastricht also provided shelter during WWII air raid alarms



A "peat toilet" found in the underground shelter. Peat was thrown into the toilet after every use.




WWII exhibit

Later during the Cold War years, it was partially converted into an anti-atomic safe place for representatives of the city authorities in case of a nuclear attack.

The woman guide who walked me through the shelter commented that “people in the Netherlands were very naïve at the time and completely underestimated the potential consequences of a nuclear fall out.”



Cold War posters and newspaper articles about the nuclear threat

“They were lucky that they never had to use this shelter because it would never have helped them survive!” she said.

The underground shelter now functions as a small museum run by a group of volunteers who call themselves the schuilers (those who seek shelter).
The shelter is open to the public for free visits and guided tours every third Sunday of the month until October. (18 July, 15 August, 19 September and 17 October from 3 pm till 5 pm)



The liberation of Maastricht in 1945

I showed the photographs I had taken during my visit to my 8 year old daughter Naomi and when I asked her what she knew about WWII, she simply replied: “Nothing.” Seeing the surprised look on my face, she added: “We haven’t studied it at school yet”.

Then I asked her: “What does the word war mean to you?”

Again she said, in a neutral voice: “Nothing”.

Blessed child.

I know I will eventually take her to visit the underground shelter, but should I do it this summer or wait another year?

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