Remembrance Day

Jonas Daniel Meijerplein (map) is a small gravelled triangle. Next to the Portuguese Synagogue on the square stands a bronze statue representing a docker. Jonas Daniel Meijerplein is the square where in 1941 in reprisal for killing a Dutch collaborator, 400 Jewish men were rounded up and put on transport to Mauthausen concentration camp.

This deportation sparked off the februaristaking, February Strike, a protest against Nazi treatment of the Jews. The outlawed Dutch Communist Party together with Amsterdam’s transport workers and dockers initiated this strike, which was quickly suppressed.

The bronze statue was unveiled in 1952 and commemorates the deportation of Amsterdam’s many Jewish residents. Each year, on the 4th May a wreath-laying ceremony is held in memory of the Jewish victims of World War II.

Remembrance Day

The Dutch remember those who were killed in World War II on 4 May, the eve of Liberation Day. Queen Beatrix lays a wreath at the foot of the National Monument on Dam Square. The twenty-one-metre tall stone obelisk in memory of the victims of WW II points high into the sky like a warning finger. Embedded in the monument are twelve urns containing earth from the eleven Dutch provinces and from The Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia and a Dutch colony until 1948.

Other Amsterdam War Monuments

Hollandse Schouwburg at Plantage Middenlaan (map) commemorates Amsterdam’s Jews who were deported to concentration camps. A long list of 6,700 family names of the 104,000 deported Jews is carved in the black granite wall.

Anne Frankhuis at Prinsengracht 263 (map) is the place where Anne Frank wrote her diary and where the Frank family was in hiding from 9 July 1942 to 1 August 1944.

Verzetsmuseum, Museum of Resistance at Plantage Kerklaan (map). Newspaper clippings, photos, films and recordings tell the history of the Dutch Resistance Movement.

Auschwitz Monument, Wertheim Park near Muiderstraat. Nooit Meer Auschwitz, Auschwitz never again, reads the inscription on the monument. Broken mirrors and a cracked urn containing the ashes of Jews who died at Buchenwald concentration camp commemorate those who died in the Holocaust.

Liberated

I am not old enough to remember, but 5th May 1945 must have been the happiest day in many people’s life. This day the Netherlands was liberated and the war was over. A war that had started five years before on 10 May. I always try to be present at the wreath laying ceremony at Dam Square. Two minutes silence at 8 pm is a moment of reflection and gratitude. Men and women gave their lives so that I live in a free world.

photo credit: personal collection