Centre of Rotterdam Taken Out

When the German Luftwaffe bombed Rotterdam on 14 May 1940 some nine thousand people lost their lives, 25,000 dwellings were destroyed, 11,000 buildings, 2,350 shops, thirteen hospitals, two thousand factories and workshops, two theatres, twelve cinemas and the premises of four daily newspapers. This puts the city on the Maas (the 2001 European City of Culture) in the same tragic line-up with Guernica, Coventry and Dresden. On 14 May 1940 an anonymous reporter on the Rotterdam newspaper ‘De Maasbode' wrote this eye-witness account of the wiping out of a city.