Monument voor het Gevallen Spoorwegpersoneel
The Monument voor het Gevallen Spoorwegpersoneel stands beside De Inktpot in Utrecht, the former main administration building of the Dutch Railways. Willem Valk’s war memorial shows two men and two women on a four-metre pedestal of French Vaurion limestone, with one woman holding a child.
Valk completed the sculpture in 1948 after an earlier design with connected terraces was rejected. He developed the final work in his Eelderwolde studio, assisted by Rinus Meijer and Wladimir de Vries. The figures express collective resistance among railway workers who died during the Second World War. Hendrik de Vries’s poem appears on the front, while the other sides carry the names of the fallen.
Unveiled by Prince Bernhard on 17 September 1949, the memorial forms the central and largest tribute in a wider network of railway commemorations across the Netherlands. More than one hundred stations also display plaques honouring local railway employees, but Utrecht gathers the national remembrance here.
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