Sjaak Vriend
Sjaak Vriend worked for forty years at Hoogovens.
He started as a young technician and ended as an instructor. Generations of boys and men passed through his hands.
“Everything that happens here, I’ve seen at least a little of.”
He knows the site like a body.
Where the heat is, where it flows, where it jams.
“From the blast furnace to the rolling mill — I can tell a story about everything. ”
In a classroom, he taught people how that body works.
Not with big words, but step by step.
“You have to make it simple” he tells me. “Otherwise no one understands it.”
He says it almost like a law.
“If you don’t understand it yourself, you can’t explain it.”
New installations came, old ones disappeared. Machines changed, processes became tighter, more efficient. But not everything disappeared.
“In the past it was really dirty,” he says. “That has become less. But it’s not gone.”
Dust remained.
Smell remained.
The sense of normality remained.
“You knew: this is part of it.”
He saw the site become cleaner, and at the same time remain the same.
As if it keeps reinventing itself without really changing.
From the outside, criticism moved closer.
Residents, action groups, cameras, reports.
“You get those questions here too. Isn’t it too much? Aren’t people getting sick?”
He nods.
“There are plenty of people who are worried. Workers too.”
But he also knows the other side.
The dependence, the rhythm of work and income.
“For many people, this is simply their job. People sometimes forget that.”
He says it without defense, but also without distance.
“You can’t just say: shut it down. That hurts. A lot of people.”
That tension remains in his story.
Not resolved, not explained.
Only present.
At the same time, he is clear about what is needed.
“It has to become cleaner. That’s clear.”
He followed the changes up close.
New installations, adjustments, plans for green steel.
“Things are happening. But it’s slow.”
He doesn’t point to a single cause.
Rather to the whole.
“It’s so big. Everything is connected. Changing it is not simple.”
Then the conversation shifts.
Not to technology, but to time.
“The older generation is leaving. You lose that experience.”
He saw it happen.
Renovations that ran over time, mistakes that were made again.
“That’s when you realize how much you actually need it.”
What is not written down disappears.
What disappears returns as a problem.
In the museum where he now gives tours, he still walks among those stories.
Visitors, former colleagues, people from outside.
“Everyone has a piece of the story. But no one has the whole.”
He tries to hold it together.
Pride.
Criticism.
History.
“It all belongs together.”
When he talks about the future, he remains down-to-earth.
“It will be different. That’s certain.”
A short silence.
“But completely clean? I don’t believe that.”
He shrugs. Not cynical, not resigned.
More like someone who knows the process.
“You have to keep improving. Always.”
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