Elfrieda Ingeborg Griffioen

Elfriede (Elly) was a distant relative of mine. I found her story as I was building the family tree, wanting to know what happened to a 6 year old girl towards the end of WW2 that made her a war victim.I started finding more young victims who died the same day, time and place. What happened to them? I was directed to the article below and I am giving a summary.When World War II was almost over in the Netherlands there came something called the hunger winter. Over 20,000 people actually starved to death because the Germans had cut off their food supply. Parents in the area (Haarlem) were desperate to have their children fed. An evacuation was organized and a total of 13 children put in a cargo van accompanied by one female police staff officer, a driver and another male to help. It was really hard for the parents to send their children off but they did not want them to starve. Desperate times count for desperate measures.The cargo van was not a military vehicle vehicle, it was from a civilian business. But on that day British fighter planes opened fire on any moving target whether it be one person on a bicycle or someone in a vehicle. Some vehicles or bicycles were even carrying white flags but to no avail. The cargo van was targeted and the pilot started firing at the van. The adults in the vehicle tried to get the children out and into a ditch for shelter but the female officer was killed as she tried to shelter six children with her body. Those children also died. One male lost his leg and another one died sometime after from an overwhelming infection. A few children made it to safety. (Note, the pilot did not just fire one time but circled around to come back and shoot some more.) Eyewitnesses said the plane was very low and the pilot could not help but seeing children coming out of the van. What is the purpose of firing a innocent children?One can only imagine the grief of the parents. One couple lost two children. The entire article is very interesting and sobering as it describes in great detail the scenario.I expected to find something tragic when I started reading this article. But I was overwhelmed by what happened for no purpose. Sluiten