Reint Dijkema was a completely ordinary medical student. He lived in a student room and was a member of a student association. He had a girlfriend he wanted to marry. Then came 10 May, 1940, everything changed when Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands.
Four years later, the young man who once wanted to save lives as a doctor had become a leading figure in the resistance, responsible for numerous raids and assassinations. In 1944, he was recognised on the street in Groningen by his former classmate Jaap, who worked as a police inspector for the German occupiers. That marked the beginning of his end.
‘Goodbye, my love’ is the first episode of Echoes, a new podcast series from UKrant. In Echoes: Stories from Four Centuries of the University of Groningen, editors Christien Boomsma and Rob van der Wal share remarkable stories and extraordinary people from the long history of the University of Groningen.
From persecuted Scottish students who sought refuge at the university in the seventeenth century, to the Russian spy who seduced a RUG physicist.
The first episode will be made available on Spotify on Wednesday. Next week’s episode, ‘White Moors’, is about professor Petrus Camper, who in 1766 set out to explore the differences between white people and people of colour.
Click here to listen to this podcast on Apple.