The book launch took place following the commemoration of 80 years of the Rhineland Offensive.
When German Wilhelm Michels was collecting material for his yet-to-be-written book ‘Niederrheinisches Land im Krieg’ in the 1950s, he also made an appeal to local people to share war memories with him in the form of diary entries or stories written down later. He had then intended to use these for his book, but had not taken into account the volume of responses sent to him. This put him in a dilemma: ‘Am I going to use all this in conjunction with the military story or should the book perhaps be published in two parts?’ No doubt he will have discussed this with Peter Sliepenbeek, at the time archivist of Nijmegen and co-researcher on local war history. Be that as it may, Michels chose the military story and the civilian stories disappeared into the archives in Kleve. Those same stories form the basis for the book ‘Gegen das Vergessen - Against forgetting’ 60 years later, supplemented with Dutch (diary) stories, all from our border region. Every German story has been translated into Dutch, and vice versa, every Dutch story has been translated into German. The chapters are supplemented with photos (some from private archives) and maps. The hardcover book has 260 pages and is an interesting co-production that took some years, but with a beautiful book as the end result.
The Euregio Rhine-Waal financially supported the book within the framework of ‘80 years of freedom’ and was this time allowed to receive not the first, but the last copy. In fact, the first edition is now completely sold out, but the project partners are currently investigating the possibilities for a reprint.
(DeepL Translation)
