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Jan Geldof (* 1948)

• Jan Geldof was born in 1948 in the Dutch city of Rotterdam

• Both of his parents witnessed the bombing of Rotterdam on the 12th of May 1940 by the German air force, and survired

• in november 1944 Jan Geldof’s father, Cornelius Marinus Geldof, was sent to Bremen as a forced labourer where he had to assist in the shunting of the train wagons

• Cornelius Geldof was released from the forced labour in April of 1945

• Cornelius in 1947 married his long-time girlfriend and the following year

We spoke to Jan Geldof, who was born in 1948 in Rotterdam in the Netherlands about the bombing of Rotterdam and his father’s time as forced worker in Germany.

His father Cornelius Marinus Geldof was born in 1924 in Tilburg. He moved with his family to Rotterdam, where he became an office worker in a glass company. On the same street lived another family, who had two sons and a daughter, with whom he fell in love.

On the 10th of May 1940, Rotterdam was bombed by German aircrafts. The street, on which Cornelius Geldof’s family lived remained intact because the fire zone ended a few hundred meters earlier. But the entire city centre of Rotterdam was destroyed. Jan Geldof remembers growing up in Rotterdam in the late 40s and early 50s, when there were almost no houses standing and the city still lay in ruins.

After the bombing, the Wehrmacht invaded and occupied the Netherlands. Because so many houses and factories had been destroyed in the bombings and in the invasion, many Dutch people chose to move to Germany, where they found jobs, for example at the aircraft and aircraft engine company Junkers in Dessau. The German occupiers installed special job centres in the Netherlands, to make the process of finding employment in Germany easier. In 1944, Cornelius Geldof submitted an application there as well. However, before this application could go anywhere, he was arrested and abducted.

On the 10th and 11th of November 1944, the German occupiers raided Rotterdam. Within these two days, 52 thousand men were arrested and abducted to Germany where they were forced to work, including Cornelius Geldof and his girlfriend’s brother. Jan Geldof explained, “It was a Saturday morning. The entire city centre of Rotterdam, that is surrounded by water, was closed off by German soldiers. And in the letterbox was a letter containing an order. It said that you had to report yourself on the street, bringing a bread ration for a day, a spoon, knife and fork. And that they will shoot if someone tries to escape.” After reporting on the street, the Dutch had to gather at certain collection points from where they were marched to the train station. There, they had to board trains that transported them to Bremen, Germany.

Bremen was an important junction for the transportation of goods via train. These train waggons transported ammunition, tanks etc. to the front, keeping the war running. This is why they were a popular target for bombings. Cornelius Geldof only worked at night, shunting the wagons, so that he would not be as visible to British and American bombers as he would be in daylight. Nonetheless, he witnessed at least one bombing, but survived unharmed. However, he had chronic problems with his lungs, and was sent to a German clinic, where he was treated in January of 1945.

Because of his health issues, Cornelius Geldof was released from the forced work in early April 1945. Together with a group of other released forced workers from the Netherlands, he walked over 200 kilometres to the port of Harlingen, in Friesland, in the north of the Netherlands. There, they received the permission to take a ship to Amsterdam. On their way, the boat was fired at by the British navy, but they survived and landed in Amsterdam. From there, Cornelius Geldof walked the remaining distance to Rotterdam, home to his family.

The German occupying forces withdrew from the Netherlands almost exactly five years after their invasion. The regained freedom and the end of the war were celebrated exuberantly in Rotterdam. But the victory was tarnished by the vast destruction that still shaped the townscape and had cost over eight hundred people their lives. Also, after five years of occupation, the people who were suspected of having collaborated with the Germans, were punished. This was true for members of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands as well as for women who had affairs or relationships with German men. The women’s heads were publicly shaved and besmeared with tar pitch.

But for Cornelius Geldof better times lay ahead. On the 14th of May 1947, exactly seven years after the bombing of Rotterdam, he married his long-term girlfriend. The following year, they had their first son, Jan. Because Rotterdam was only starting to be rebuilt, glass was needed and Cornelius Geldof became an office worker in the glass trade again. He worked in this position until the late 1950s, when he changed career paths and the family moved to Brielle.

But even when the external circumstances had improved, both Cornelius Geldof and his wife had difficulties in overcoming the trauma of the German occupation. She was especially scarred by the bombing of Rotterdam, which she had witnessed as fourteen-year-old. She had lifelong mental health issues and had to take medication because of it. Cornelius Geldof, on the other hand, never talked about his experiences as forced worker in Germany. This is a common thread for many former forced workers from the Netherlands. Often, their children never knew about the abduction until their fathers’ death, when they found old documents, diaries and photographs in the attic. This is why Jan Geldof researched extensively his father’s story as well as the history of Dutch forced workers during the Second World War and published the findings.