Just saw a history television program (VPRO Andere Tijden/Other Times) on the rise of the new type of elderly home in the Netherlands in the seventies of last century and remembered a reportage I wrote for our radical weekly newspaper (Amsterdams Weekblad) must have been 1972 on a sad old man who had been transported to the new pre-graveyard high rise structure, from the inner town to the outskirts of the city…. He was looking from his high rise coffin onto a high road serpentining to a grey horizon… Just checked the municipal archive for a photograph of that particular elderly home (Flevohuis) and found it. The picture illustrates the atmosphere perfectly… the Public Works photographer gave a visual clue by the black frame ribbon that goes with this historical document of Old age Apartheid in the Netherlands; the Welfare Home Lands for the elderly…. freeing young and productive families from the burden of having parents….
'TEHUISLAND FLEVO' (Elderly Home Country) at the border of the city, at the edge of a former cemetery. Fotoarchief van de Gemeentelijke Dienst Volkshuisvesting; eldery home Kramatweg, Indische Buurt (Indian neighbourhood pointing to the old Dutch East Indies) Amsterdam.
