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And then, suddenly, that devastating blast!

In the early morning of Tuesday, April 3, 1945, the war came to an end in Didam. In nearby Loil, residents also hung out their flags in celebration. People were jubilant — the misery was finally over.

But just four days later, a massive explosion shattered the relief. On Saturday, April 7, a devastating blast rocked Kloosterstraat. It destroyed the girls’ school and a large part of the convent that once stood on the site of today’s park. Two 12-year-old girls, Fien Seegers and Leike van Vuuren, lost their lives. That afternoon, they had offered to help the nuns clean the convent. While the nuns went to retrieve the key, the girls waited patiently at the closed gate. Moments later, heavy ammunition — left behind by retreating German forces — detonated in the school.

Back in September 1944, the Germans had requisitioned all local schools, using them to station troops. In Loil, when space remained, workers from Organisation Todt were also housed there. This semi-military construction group employed forced laborers, including many Dutch men beginning in 1942.

It is likely that, near the end of the war, the Germans stored heavy munitions beneath the floor of the school. On April 7, these exploded — probably triggered by a time bomb. “Glass shattered throughout half of Loil,” recalls Annie Seegers, sister of victim Fientje. “From our kitchen window at the back of the Wehlseweg, we saw what had happened. My mother just screamed, ‘Fien! Fien!’ She sensed it. We all ran to the site. When we arrived, we saw the smoke and the giant crater. Not a single wall of the school was left standing. And almost nothing of Fien or Leike was ever found.” The war was over — but for the Seegers and Van Vuuren families, life was never the same again.

Kloosterstraat, t.h.v. Kapelstraat, Didam
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