Remembrance bench and Canadian Monument - Hooghalen

In this flowerbed on the Middendorp in Hooghalen you will find three monuments together. First, the memorial bench for the fallen resistance fighter Lubbe Boxem. In his farm in Laaghalerveen, he hid people in hiding. After he was probably betrayed, he was arrested on 12 December 1944 and murdered three months later, in Neuengamme concentration camp. You can find the stolperstein commemorating him on the spot where his farm stood, but this flowerbed also pays attention to his memory.

In the same period as the murder of the resistance fighter, the Allies were advancing towards the east of the Netherlands. The southern provinces had already been liberated. On the night of 7-8 April 1945, a group of 676 French paratroopers from the French 2nd Parachute Brigade (part of Operation Amherst) went to fight the fiercely resisting Germans in Drenthe. On 12 April they were supported by Canadian troops, including a tank unit of the 1st Canadian Armoured Division, but the occupiers did not give in easily. Two Canadian tanks were lost here in Hooghalen, costing the lives of six Canadian soldiers, just before Drenthe was completely liberated on 13 April 1945. They are commemorated with the plaque in this flowerbed.

The Crossroads Vector is the last monument in this flowerbed. It is a physical marker of a location with a story on the Liberation Route across Europe. The vector was designed by Daniel Libeskind. This particular vector, named Crossroads, is in memory of the liberation of Drenthe by French paratroopers and the Canadian Liberation Army.