Liberation Day skirt

This skirt was made for celebrated New Zealand photographer Ans Westra in 1946. Anna Jacoba (Ans) Westra was born in Leiden, Netherlands, in 1936, the only child of Pieter Hein Westra and Hendrika Christina van Doorn. Hendrika made this skirt for Ans when she was ten years old, to mark Liberation Day in 1946. During World War Two the Netherlands was occupied by Nazi Germany, and many thousands of civilians died under Nazi rule and as a result of air raids. Approximately 107,000 Dutch Jews were deported to concentration and death camps, and only 5,200 survived.

In 1944 and 1945, troops from Canada, Britain, Poland, the Netherlands, and the United States fought to liberate the Netherlands, and Germany capitulated on 5 May 1945. The Netherlands celebrated Liberation Day every five years until 1990, when it was declared an annual national holiday. Liberation Day follows Remembrance Day on 4 May, dedicated to victims of war who have died during or since the Second World War.

The idea for National Liberation/National Celebration skirts (nationale feestok) came from resistance fighter Mies Boissevain-van Lennep, who was arrested in August 1943 and transferred to the concentration camp Vught in October. While she was in prison someone sent her a small tie made of different patches of fabric, each patch upcycled from the clothing of friends and acquaintances. After liberation Boussevain-van Lennep encouraged women to make their own patchwork skirts for Liberation Day, as markers of female solidarity, archives of personal memory, and symbols of the reconstruction of the Netherlands. Each skirt is unique, but all have triangles along the bottom seam, embroidered with the dates on which they were worn.

Ans brought this skirt to New Zealand with her, and it was displayed at City and Sea Museum, possibly as part of their Living Treasures Two exhibition (2003-4). Ans’ daughter Lisa recalls that as children they heard many stories about the war from their parents, although Lisa wasn’t aware of the skirt until it was exhibited at the museum.

Throughout her life Ans maintained a strong connection to the Netherlands, and when asked in 2013 if she still felt Dutch, she replied ‘Oh, very strongly. When you grow old you more and more know who you are and what you are and I'm very Dutch. I still speak fluently and when I was there last year people didn't even know that I'd been away.’ The skirt allows us to represent an aspect of Ans’ culture and history, and more broadly it represents the displacement and devastation caused by World War Two.

References:

---, n.d. 'Dutch liberation skirts'. Institute on Gender Equality and Women's History. https://institute-genderequality.org/news-publications/violence/war/dutch-liberation-skirts/
---. 2013. ‘Twelve Questions: Ans Westra’. New Zealand Herald. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/kahu/twelve-questions-ans-westra/3AJ3HD4X625BZE3DAHWRW7FYTA/
U.S. Embassy and Consulate in the Netherlands. n.d. ‘U.S. Contribution to the Liberation of the Netherlands’. https://nl.usembassy.gov/our-relationship/75-years-of-liberation-of-the-netherlands-75liberationnl/
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. n.d. ‘The Netherlands’. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-netherlands