With a lot of press attention and protests on the street in connection with the presence of Israeli President Herzog, the King opened the National Holocaust Museum on Plantage Middenlaan yesterday. The Hollandsche Schouwburg memorial across the street is also open to the public again.
The museum
The National Holocaust Museum focuses on the persecution of Jews in the Netherlands. Before the Second World War, Jews and non-Jews lived here with, next to and alongside each other. They had the same rights. During the occupation, the Nazis murdered approximately six million Jews in Europe; called the Holocaust or Shoah. Three quarters of the Jewish population in the Netherlands were murdered.
The museum also discusses the daily life of Jews prior to the Second World War, the liberation as Jews experienced it and the dealing with the Holocaust in our national memory culture. The museum presents history without restraint and gives the victims a recognizable face.
In addition to the permanent presentation, the museum will also host temporary exhibitions. There is a museum café and a museum shop
Creche and national thank you sign
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The museum is located in the former Hervormde Kweekschool on Plantage Middenlaan. During the war, the Nazis used the adjacent Crèche as a collection and deportation place for Jewish children. The then director Henriëtte Pimentel helped hundreds of them escape, also via the Training School and via the garden of the current museum building.
The garden also contains a monument with which Jewish Dutch people thank resistance heroes for saving Dutch Jews, designed by inventor and artist Gabriel Lester at the initiative of Maurits Cohen and Hans Vles, who survived the Second World War in hiding as young children.
The Hollandsche Schouwburg
The building across the street was used as a theater before the Second World War. From July 1942, the Nazis used it as a collection point for the deportation of Jews. Tens of thousands were locked up here for hours, days or weeks and then deported to concentration and extermination camps. Now it is an important memorial for all victims of the Holocaust.
National Holocaust Museum and Hollandsche Schouwburg, Plantage Middenlaan 27 and 24