(2 May 2025)
RESCTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Delft, Netherlands – 29 April 2025
1. Various of Dutch Winter Hunger survivor, 83-year-old Ben Buitenhuis in his apartment
2. Various of wedding photo of Buitenhuis and his deceased wife, Ria, who died in 2023
3. Mid shot of Buitenhuis
4. Close shot of a recent photo of Buitenhuis’ wife
5. SOUNDBITE (Dutch) Ben Buitenhuis, 83, Dutch Winter Hunger survivor:
"My wife used to say, ‘If I have to wait for you, I’ll never get any food,’ and I think that’s an after effect of the war, when you never got enough to eat. I don’t know the feeling of hunger. No, no, no."
6. Buitenhuis holding a childhood photo taken in 1945 showing him sitting next to a girl called Neeltje, clutching a plate and spoon
7. Mid shot of Buitenhuis’s photo
8. Tilt up shot from Buitenhuis’ childhood photo to his face
9. SOUNDBITE (Dutch) Ben Buitenhuis, 83, Dutch Winter Hunger survivor:
"I used to stand with a bowl of water at the milk factory, waiting until a sack with powdered milk fell and spilled open, then I used to empty the bowl and scooped it with powdered milk, but I was inevitably told to empty it again, but some of the powder would stick to the wet surface. Then I’d head back home which was 20 metres away. That way we’d have a sort of milk."
10. Pan shot of Buitenhuis bringing his laptop
11. Various of Buitenhuis showing photos of area where he used to live during the years of World War II and other documents
12. SOUNDBITE (Dutch) Ben Buitenhuis, 83, Dutch Winter Hunger survivor:
"It’s something to maintain, so that people still understand what freedom is. What I don’t understand is how some people can be so full of hate without having any argument with others. I don’t get it. And they don’t understand it either, because don’t have an answer for it. I think that is shameful."
13. Various of Buitenhuis
14. SOUNDBITE (Dutch) Ben Buitenhuis, 83, Dutch Winter Hunger survivor:
"Look at what’s in front of you, not what’s behind. That’s over, you can’t get that back, yeah."
15. Various of Buitenhuis standing outside his apartment
STORYLINE:
Ben Buitenhuis doesn’t get hungry. He never really has since the end of World War II, when he had to use his wits to scavenge for milk powder or wait in line for a meager ration of a meal made from flower bulbs.
"My wife used to say, ‘If I have to wait for you, I’ll never get any food,’ "he said, chuckling at the memory of his wife, Ria, who died in 2023. “And I think that’s an after effect of the war, when you never got enough to eat. I don’t know the feeling of hunger."
Buitenhuis, now an 83-year-old retired truck driver, was one of the lucky ones.
The end of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands on May 5, 1945 — 80 years ago on Monday — came too late for around 20,000 people who died as a result of starvation or freezing temperatures in what the Dutch call, with grim simplicity, The Hunger Winter of 1944-45.
While Allied forces including U.S., British, Canadian and Polish troops liberated parts of the southern Netherlands in 1944, the more densely populated western part of the country, including major cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam, had to wait months before their war finally ended with the German capitulation.
The long weeks and months between the liberation of the south and the final German capitulation turned into a famine in the west.
There wasn’t enough food to eat or fuel to heat homes in a freezing winter.
Buitenhuis remembers taking a bowl to a milk factory next to his home in Delft and waiting until a sack with powdered milk fell and spilled open.
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