Stories of the City

In the 1950s, my grandmother travelled by ship from Suriname to the Netherlands with a group of nurses. There was a shortage of nurses, and after the Second World War Rotterdam needed every pair of hands for its reconstruction. A book and documentary about these women were published under the title Zusters uit Suriname.

My grandmother told me stories about Rotterdam in the early 1960s: how she cared for the first Turkish and Moroccan labour migrants working in the mines, before family reunification had begun, and about the mud pit in front of the old Central Station.

She met my grandfather here in the 1960s. He also came from Suriname and worked as an archivist for the municipality of Rotterdam. My mother and her sisters were born in Rotterdam. In 1975, against the prevailing migration movement, the entire family returned to Suriname.