Netherlands War and Resistance Museum

[deejay]

Today I visited the Netherlands War and Resistance Museum at Overloon and the German military cemetery also in the Netherlands.

Overloon is a small town in the Netherlands situated about 45 km north-east of the more known city of Eindhoven. This little town was the site of a so called 'forgotten battle' totally destructed in october 1944, remnants of the battle such as tanks and guns where dragged to a place on the outskirts of the village (some stood on their original location) and this became the museum just after WW2.

The German Cemetery at Ysselstein lies about 15 km from Overloon. It is the main German war cemetery in the Netherlands with appr. 32,000 graves and the amount is still rising as even today missing soldiers are still found all over the Netherlands and buried there.

I would like to share the images I took there with you people so far away. Please enjoy and feel free to ask any questions.

http://members.home.nl/tsorena/Overloon/Thumbnails.html

Notice the Panther undergoing restoration, has been discussed earlier on this forum if I recall it correctly.

many regards,
DJ

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi Deejay, I too have been to Overloon and it is a great museum and is a must!

I am glad to see the "Panther" is coming on since I last visited in September 2002. I have a few tiny peices of Zimmerit removed from it prior to sandblasting the hull clean.

It is a pity they still have the post war "Corgi" scooter shown as a WW2 exhibit

Is the peice of tattooed human skin with KL number still on show in the Holocaust exhibtion? It always gives us the creeps.

What do you feel about the vehicles still being displayed out of doors? We feel that they should now be placed undercover, but that will be down to money, like everything else, I guess?

Thanks for posting these pics!

Cheers, Ade.

[Volkbert]

I visited Overloon several times. The first time I was impressed by an SA dagger. I always wanted to have one. At that time I didn't know there was such a thing as militaria collecting.

It's a great place to visit and the exhibition of vehicles outside is nice because you can walk around the forest and watch the vehicles. But I agree with Ade that it's better to store them indoors. And I think they are moving more and more things inside. Compared to my first time there (1994) they moved a lot and built a new place especially for vehicles.

The skin was still there the last time I visited Overloon.

[deejay]

replies

Hi Ade and Volkbert,

thanks for your quick replies on this thread.

I totally agree that all the vehicles should be well protected from further decay (look at those pics of the sherman interior, another 60 years and the sherman is probably disintegrated...). I must say that the situation has improved very, very much since I first visited the museum in 1980 as at that time everything stood outside. Only the smaller items like uniforms etc. where indoors.

About the human skin: I was there with my wife and two little ones, 1 and 5 years old, I did not want to show them the holocaust part yet, as you understand.

About the Panther: I noticed that they are doing a great job on restoring it. Looks like the tyres on the inner wheels are brand new. But I heard they sold the engine of it ... don't know if it is true or not.

Here a close-up picture of restoration work.

DJ