Station Zwolle

In fact, the hunger winter began on 17 September 1944, the day of the (failed) Battle of Arnhem. On the evening of 17 September, the government-in-exile ordered the employees of the Dutch Railways to go on a general strike. As a result, military equipment can no longer be transported from Germany by rail. The supply of coal from South Limburg, needed for domestic heating and food distribution, is seriously jeopardised. But it is expected that this will be short-lived, because the 'Market Garden' operation will also bring freedom above the major rivers in the short term. How different it turned out. The operation failed and the gap between 'Market Garden' and the liberation was more than half a year. A long, cold winter, in which scarcity and hunger increasingly took hold of the west. In some places, especially in North Limburg, there was still heavy fighting. As many as 90,000 people were taken out of this war zone and evacuated by rickety trains (mainly freight trains) to the north-east of the Netherlands. One of the stations where they stopped was Zwolle. Sometimes the evacuees had already been on the train for four days without care. Aid workers who wanted to lend a helping hand found harrowing conditions at Zwolle station.

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