Margarita Osipian

Kees and his Airplane

What have people been bringing to our resistance archive?

In this ongoing series, Objects and their People, we'll be writing about our favourite resistance objects and the anecdotes and people that came along with them.

Keep up with what is happening in our Pièce de Résistance exhibition space when you're not here!

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Kees Aben and and his wooden airplane with war rubbish. - ikCam picture taken at Pièce de Résistance , Mediamatic Bank.

With: kees aben

There are many different things that draw people to our exhibition, and once inside there are so many different ways to share personal stories and objects of resistance.

Kees Herman Aben first came into our exhibition after finding his house's address in the special insert that we made for the Parool newspaper. This insert listed all the houses that Jewish people had lived in before the Second World War and were deported from. We were asking people to take a photograph of their house and add it to our Jewish Houses Project. You can see Kees's contribution and house here.

During the Second World War, Kees was a young boy living in Amersfoort. A couple days after he brought in the picture of his home, he came back to our exhibition with a new contribution! To our resistance collection he added a toy wooden airplane from the war, with rubbish hanging off the end of its tale. See the airplane and read more about it in our digital archive here.

Writing a story is one thing, but hearing it from someone is really special. Kees also recorded a short interview about his own personal story of resistance in our Interview Booth. You can watch his interview below.

Come and contribute your own object and story to our growing resistance archive!

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The wooden airplane that Kees added to our resistance archive - ina uhrig (de), kees aben

An interview that Marina did with Kees about his resistance story By: ina uhrig (de)

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