CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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A communist icon
MICHAL BONCZA reflects on the legacy of of the legendary Dutch communist and resistance fighter Hannie Schaft
EXEMPLARY LIFE: (L to R) Woman of the Resistance statue by by Truus Menger-Oversteegen; Hannie Schaft c1940
[(L to R) Natalie Dekkers Fotografie/flickr/CC - Nationaal Archief NL]
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
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SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
JAMIE BRITTON recommends this fine analysis of the architectural, ecological and infrastructural destruction of the Gaza Strip
ART IN THE OPEN
HANNIE SCHAFT MONUMENT, KENAUPARK, HAARLEM, HOLLAND
IN THE middle of the open spaces of Kenaupark in Haarlem, the Netherlands, a crowd of women stand in a vigil around a life-size bronze statue of Hannie Schaft.
Designed by Truus Menger-Oversteegen in 1982, it depicts the legendary Dutch WWII resistance fighter, legs and arms outstretched in an combative posture of defiance.
Freedom was, at the time, one generation away from being extinguished by fascism and Schaft — murdered at the tender age of 24 — epitomises the courage, diligence and ultimate sacrifice that it took to defeat what Brecht called “the nakedest, most shameless, most oppressive, and most treacherous form of capitalism.”
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