This grave is for my brother, Gerrit Hermanus van Ree who died in November 1944 at the age of four. This is the story of how and why. I was born in the Netherlands in July 1952, seven and a half years after my brother died. I was also given his name, Gerrit Hermanus van Ree. When I was four years old (in 1956), my mother, with tears in her eyes, told me the story of how my brother came to be buried in a War Cemetery in Germany. From that very moment, I was determined that I would one day go to his grave.

Now let us go back. On 8 May 1943, the Nazis in the Netherlands announced the introduction of labourdeployment (Arbeitseinsatz) for all Dutch men aged 18 to 35. As a result, my father was taken and allocated to a river barge as a first mate to Captain Hallmann, the German owner of the barge. This assignment released a young mariner for service in the German Navy. When Captain Hallmann learned that my father was married, he offered to arrange for my mother to join my father on board the barge. My sister remained in the Netherlands in a boardingschool, supported by our grandparents, while my mother and my brother Gerrit (then three years old) joined my father on the barge. This suggests to me that my mother and brother were likely registered as “volunteers” for the forced labour program. After about a year, my brother fell ill in November 1944. He was taken to hospital in Frankfurt, where he passed away. He was buried in a local cemetery. After the War, my parents returned to Frankfurt to visit the grave. My sister travelled with them and she recalls the grave was in a children’s section, marked by a simple plaque on the ground. My family emigrated to Australia in 1952, just months after I was born. My parents next visited Germany in 1976.They were pleased to find Captain Hallmann, then in his eighties, and thanked him once again for his compassion. My father’s trip diary also records that my parents visited the cemetery in Frankfurt, but were unable to find the grave. They concluded that the grave must simply be gone. In the early 2000’s, my professional career provided opportunities to visit Frankfurt and search for my brother’s grave. Once, I attended a central cemetery office where volunteer ladies helped me search records from the various cemeteries around the city (over the years, cemetery management had been consolidated). I also walked through the children’s sections of cemeteries in the region, all without success. In 2020 a web search led me to the Oorlogsgravenstichting (the Netherlands War Graves Foundation). Entering my brother’s name in the search function provided the name of the cemetery and a grave number. In 2023 (after a delay caused by COVID), I was finally able to find the grave, something I had been longing to do for about 65 years. He was no longer in a children’s section but in a Netherlands War Graves cemetery. So, this is the story of how a four-year-old Dutch boy comes to be buried in a war graves cemetery in Germany. My heartfelt thanks to the Oorlogsgravenstichting.