Tino Dam – Study Group Board
Board member Study Group Missing Soldier and Webmaster
As a child, Tino Dam searched for remnants and traces of the Second World War. He wasn’t aware that human remains could be buried at the places he went to. Actually, he never thought about it much simply due to a lack of knowledge. Of course he had heard stories of human remains findings, but internet didn’t exist and there wasn’t any interest in newspapers.
Searching the woods around Arnhem and the gardens of the Oosterbeek Airborne Museum were not unusual, but nowadays that’s quite different! Arnhem, Oosterbeek (Renkum) and Nijmegen (all Netherlands) and more municipalities have a metal detector ban. Fines can go up to thousands of Euros and the detector could be mercilessly taken from you.
Tino figures these rules; the holes and pits that he encounters in the woods are an attack on nature. Mainly the damage seems to be caused by “treasure hunters”, without any respect for nature and other people’s property.
Organization
Early 2007 there were serious plans among the members of Study Group Missing Soldier of raising some kind of organization. It turned out that all members had the same idea about the necessity and usefulness of Study Group Missing Soldier (former Foundation Stichting Missing In Action (MIA)).
Not many organizations have the same goal as Study Group Missing Soldier. There are other organization searching for World War II missing but most of them have their mind set for aircraft and not for ground losses.
For Tino the Study Group is more than just an interesting hobby. Taking the missing home became more of a mission. Reunite them with family and providing a proper decent grave is his ultimate goal.
For Tino it’s irrelevant where he or she came from. At the end of the war, it were mostly very young Germans who were sent to trouble. Those boys and girls did not have the choices we have today in our wealth of freedom.
Tino Dam as a Official DPAA volunteer
Since April 2018 Tino Dam is an official United States Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) volunteer.