A tragic plane crash, the personal stories of its fatalities and survivors, and the subsequent investigation to try to discover what really happened while the authorities try to withhold information. It could be a fictional series, but in the case of the Dutch miniseries The Crash (which the Cosmo channel premieres in Spain) it is not like that.
It is the reconstruction of the most serious air disaster in the Netherlands, when on October 4, 1992, a Boeing 747 of the Israeli airline El Al from New York and bound for Tel Aviv, after a technical stop at the ‘Amsterdam-Schiphol airport, crashed into the iconic Bijlmer building, an eleven-story building located in the Bijlmermeer neighborhood of the same name, where most of its residents were immigrants. There were a total of 43 fatalities: 39 residents of the building plus the three crew members and the only passenger on the plane, which was cargo.
Based on real facts, people and data, The Crash approaches a still open wound in the collective memory of the Netherlands, which remains unresolved and which still has some questions. Threatened citizens, segregated aid, a black box that has not yet been found, undeclared illnesses or insurance companies that pay claims based on people’s educational level are some of the chilling details revealed in the series.
“The scandalous conclusion of this story is that, today, our Government has never admitted its mistakes. That the truth has not yet come to light”, said Michael Leendertset, creator and screenwriter of the series. Among the mysteries that surrounded the accident, the one that raised the most controversy was what kind of cargo the plane was actually carrying.
At first the authorities assured that it was only perfume, flowers and computer parts. But as survivors and rescue personnel began to fall ill with respiratory illnesses, insomnia, stomach problems, and general pain or discomfort, suspicions arose, with some hypothesizing that these ailments showed that the plane must have been carrying cargo military chemical on board.
The series, which consists of five episodes and which the public network1 of the Netherlands premiered last year coinciding with the thirty years since the accident, resumes the journalistic investigation that uncovered how the Dutch government, in addition to committing some negligence , withheld information from the public, and cowed and deceived many people into not revealing the truth.