The year 2025 is the year of the commemoration of 80 years of in the Netherlands.
This exhibition not only gives an impression of wartime telephony in the Rotterdam area but also in other parts of the country. On May 10th 1940 the war started and soon the fighting spread to Rotterdam and culminated with the unnecessary air raid on May 14th. After Dutch capitulation the Rotterdam phone network was rebuilt using spare parts from all over the country and extra capacity of other switchboards in the region. The Germans tried to control everything by putting collaborators and guards everywhere and some companies simply collaborated to try to keep German influence out. Nevertheless brave PTT staff tried to find ways to contact reliable colleagues and constructed an own phone system for the resistance. During the final months of occupation lots of equipment was stolen or destroyed and after liberation the whole telephone network needed to be rebuilt and got modernized.
This stained glass window was once placed in the The Hague Marnix exchange, later in the office building at the Prinses Beatrix Laan and at present in a commemorative centre at the former Ypenburg Airfield
