Netherlands: First Holocaust museum to open amid rising anti-Semitism

Eighty years after World War II, the Netherlands is set to open its first Holocaust museum, hoping to raise public awareness at a time when the war in the Gaza Strip has raised concerns about anti-Semitism.

Striped uniforms from Auschwitz, clothing buttons torn off upon arrival at the Sobibor extermination camp, letters and photographs: the museum displays 2,500 objects, most of which have never been shown to the public.

Before the war and Nazi occupation, about 140,000 Jews lived in the Netherlands, mostly in Amsterdam. 102,000 of them died in the Holocaust, or about 75%.

An area rich in history

The building that houses the museum, a former kindergarten located in the historic Jewish quarter in the center of Amsterdam, itself played a vital role in the history of the Holocaust in the Netherlands.

Across the road is a theater where Jewish families were taken to await deportation to death camps. Before the deportation, the children were separated from their families and taken to kindergarten.

Around 600 children were smuggled out, most in boxes or baskets, under the noses of Nazi guards and taken to safety by the Dutch resistance.

Museum visitors have the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of these children, along the corridor along which they ran. The walls are decorated with photographs of babies and children who did not survive.

“Restore the dignity of victims”

The museum also displays texts of anti-Jewish laws imposed by the Nazis on the community, including the 1942 requirement to wear a yellow Star of David, as well as photographs of the victims and information about their lives.

“We tell this story of extreme humiliation and restore the dignity of the victims by presenting their objects in a special way,” said museum curator Annemiek Gringold.

“In a few hundred square meters in the center of Amsterdam we find a story of deportation, cooperation, a dark part of history,” she added.

“And on the other hand you have a building that symbolizes humanity, solidarity and the great courage of the Righteous Ones who saved Jews at the risk of their lives,” she continued.

Anne Frank House nearby

Not far from here is the home of Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager who hid with her family in a secret annex for two years to escape the Nazis before dying in Bergen-Belsen at age 16 in 1945. Her diary became one of the most powerful stories about the Holocaust.

King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands will officially open the museum on Sunday amid rising anti-Semitism in the country.

The number of anti-Semitic incidents doubled in 2023, according to official data. In a recent attack that made headlines, swastikas were painted on a synagogue. Amsterdam allocated 900,000 euros to protect the museum, which had concrete blocks installed in front of it to prevent it from being rammed by a car.

The Dutch Jewish Quarter Association, which runs the museum, has so far refrained from commenting on the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that sparked the current war in the Gaza Strip. “Now, just days before the opening of the National Holocaust Museum, a museum about the effects of isolation and dehumanization and the courage to resist it, that is exactly what we are doing,” she said in a press release.

“Urgent” mission against anti-Semitism

The association said it was “seriously concerned” about anti-Semitism, polarization and Islamophobia in the Netherlands since the conflict in the Gaza Strip began. “Unfortunately, the opening of the National Holocaust Museum coincided with the ongoing war. This only makes our mission more relevant,” the association said.

The museum highlights current topics such as propaganda, nationalism and the weakening of the rule of law, raised by Annemiek Gringold. We all need to “be aware of what people are capable of doing to others,” she said.

The museum displays the shoes worn by 82-year-old Holocaust survivor Roosier Stenhart-Drucker when her Jewish parents abandoned her when she was two years old, in the hope that someone would find her. “I am extremely glad that our history is not lost after all this tragedy, all this sadness,” she said.