Occupied City (2023) Movie Script

1
71 Ruysdaelstraat.
Office of Keesing, printer
and publisher of magazines.
Jacob Keesing,
his wife Esperance
and sisters Suzanne and Marianne
took their own lives in IJmuiden
harbour on the 15th of May 1940,
the day the Dutch
army surrendered.
Many Jews had hoped to escape
to England from there
but most could not find a boat
willing to take them.
The director of the company,
Jacob's brother Isaac Keesing,
managed to escape
to the United States in 1942.
He transferred the company
to his employee Peter Diesveld.
He had to work
under a "Verwalter",
a supervisor
the Germans installed
at all Jewish owned businesses.
Diesveld secretly continued
to pay fired Jewish staff.
He moved into
Isaac Keesing's home
and let people hide
both there and at the office.
One man hid for days
on top of the elevator.
Prins Bernhardplein.
The German authorities
forbade the naming of streets
after living members
of the Dutch Royal family.
This square was
renamed Gooiplein,
after a rural
area near Amsterdam.
7 Schagerlaan.
In December 1942,
the Bergsma
family told the police
that a four-month-old baby was
left in front of their house.
Throughout 1942, newspapers
reported a "flood of
foundlings".
In this way, Jewish children
could be taken in legally by
helpers,
while their real identity
remained concealed.
To stop this practice,
the Germans announced
in January 1943
that all foundlings
would be regarded as Jewish.
Baby David Kurk survived the war
as Rudolf Bergsma.
His mother Carolina Kurk- Cohen
was murdered in Auschwitz
killing centre in 1944,
his father Jacob Kurk in
Mauthausen concentration camp
in 1945.
Demolished.
Rembrandtplein.
Many bars and cafs around this
square close to the old
Jewish Quarter
were frequented by Germans
and members of
the Dutch Nazi party, the NSB
and their paramilitary unit,
the WA Blackshirts.
In June 1940,
these anti-Semitic thugs,
smashed up
the interior of De Kroon
and other places
perceived as Jewish.
Half a year later,
they smashed the windows of bars
that did not hang
"Jews prohibited" signs
and trashed a bar that still
let Jewish artists perform.
In February 1941, numerous
street fights broke out on
this square
between Dutch Nazis,
helped by German Order Police,
and Jews, who started
to organise their defence
against the brutal attacks.
The Dutch police
were not allowed to interfere.
From the 15th of September 1941,
Jews were officially banned from
visiting cafs,
bars and restaurants.
One city councillor commented
that lost revenues were "at
least made up for" by German
soldiers.
Later in the war, the square
became a centre for black market
activities.
Zeedijk.
The red-light district
was officially off-limits
to the Wehrmacht,
the German army.
Later in the war, it became
a centre for the black market.
74 Oudezijds Achterburgwal,
ground floor.
Home of Betje Fuld.
According to her arrest report
from the Police Department for
Jewish Affairs,
dated the 10th of July 1942,
she was "formerly a seamstress,
now a prostitute.
She was outdoors
without a Jewish star
and she prostituted herself.
She also stated that she charged
for carnal intercourse
with Aryan persons."
Fuld was murdered in Auschwitz
in September 1942.
Kalverstraat.
A fight broke out in this street
on the 31st of August 1941,
the birthday of
Queen Wilhelmina.
The Dutch Queen rallied
against the Germans from London.
Resistance worker Cor Snijders
recalled after the war:
"We celebrated by walking
along Kalverstraat
with flowers in our buttonholes.
Dutch Nazi thugs
started pulling them off,
so we decided to attach razor
blades behind the corsages.
The next time one of
the blackshirts tried to rip out
a flower,
it got very bloody.
This caused quite a scrap,
and in the end they cordoned
off part of the street.
Everyone wearing a flower
was arrested."
62, Max Euw Square,
then Leidsekade.
Lido Restaurant.
"Leidseplein
completely cleansed,"
was the headline of an article
in the newspaper of
the Dutch Nazi party,
in January 1941.
It continued: "One can scarcely
believe one's own eyes.
No Jews allowed at
the prestigious Amricain hotel,
no Jews allowed at the Lido,
which until recently
was the gathering place
for Jews on Leidseplein,
no Jews allowed at Amsterdam's
largest picture house,
the City cinema.
In short, no
Jews allowed anywhere!
It is almost too wonderful
to be true:
there are no Jews to disturb
Christians in
their leisure time."
In March 1943,
after losing the battle
of Stalingrad,
the Germans closed all
luxury restaurants and stores.
The staff were sent to work
in Germany.
After liberation, in May 1945,
the Lido became
a Canadian officer's club.
One of the resident musicians
was the Surinamese saxophone
player Kid Dynamite.
Demolished.
123 Apollolaan.
Apollo House.
Guesthouse,
owned by the Josephs family,
who were all murdered
in Auschwitz in 1942,
as were many of their guests.
It subsequently became
a guesthouse for Germans.
The German security service,
the SD, requisitioned the hotel
following the bombing of its
headquarters in November 1944.
The house was partly furnished
with items taken from the home
of the Ruys family.
Resistance worker Gerrit Ruys
was a solicitor
with offices on Keizersgracht,
where he was arrested
in January 1945
after his son Hugo was picked up
while distributing
the underground newspaper
The Parole.
Gerrit Ruys's other son Herman
had already been arrested
two years earlier.
Both sons were executed.
Gerrit Ruys died at
Sandbostel concentration camp.
His wife, Johanna Ruys-Bavinck,
was also arrested
and released from prison
in April 1945.
Amsterdam, the 15th of May 1940.
German troops approached
Amsterdam from the east
and drove further into town over
the Berlage bridge on
Amstel River,
where German citizens
and Dutch sympathisers
were orchestrated
to welcome them.
The Dutch army had capitulated
after the Germans bombarded
Rotterdam
and threatened
to destroy more cities.
The Netherlands initially
had tried to stay neutral,
like it was
during the First World War,
but the country was attacked
by the German army
at the same time
as Belgium and France.
The Dutch queen, Wilhelmina,
and her cabinet fled to London.
In 1940 around 800,000 people
lived in Amsterdam,
not much less than now.
10% of them were Jewish.
The Nazis considered
most other Dutch people
fellow members
of the Aryan race
and some hoped to eventually
incorporate the Netherlands
into
the Greater Germanic Empire.
They found a substantial group
of supporters in the capital.
The Dutch Nazi party, the NSB,
got almost 30,000 votes
in the municipal elections
in Amsterdam
a year before the war.
One of the first measures
the Germans took
was putting the clock
an hour and 40 minutes forward,
so it was the same time
in Amsterdam as in Berlin.
The weather report disappeared
from the newspapers.
The weather was considered
a military secret.
From the Berlage bridge
a part of the German troops
made their way to City Hall.
The city had to provide housing
for all Germans,
starting with the soldiers.
Soon a civic administration was
installed in the Netherlands.
The Germans began to replace
all Dutch organisations
like worker's unions
and charity organisations
with national socialist ones.
he press was brought
under German control
and even the boy scouts
would be nazified.
On that first day of
the occupation of Amsterdam,
an alderman informed
the German lieutenant-general
Karl von Tiedemann
in the name of the city council
that he hoped the Germans
would leave the Jewish citizens
of Amsterdam undisturbed.
Tiedemann answered cryptically:
"If the Jews
don't want to see us,
we will not see the Jews."
Museumplein, then called the
grounds of the Ice-Skating Club.
Venue for major events.
This was where
the NSB blackshirts marched,
where the head of the SS,
Heinrich Himmler,
inspected troops,
and where the Dutch Nazi leader
Anton Mussert
and Reich Commissioner
Arthur Seyss-Inquart
spoke at large rallies.
The villas on the east side of
the square became
the headquarters
of the German military
and civil administration.
Next to the Concertgebouw
were the headquarters of
the Dutch Nazi Party, the NSB.
In 1943,
the Germans started building
defence works on the square,
including barbed wire fencing
and bunkers known popularly
as the "three peaks".
A few streets
were also cordoned off.
After D-Day, the allied invasion
in Normandy in June 1944,
Adolf Hitler gave orders to
defend "the Rotterdam and
Amsterdam area
for as long as possible."
This square became one
of the Sttzpunkte,
or "bastions", for
the German defence of Amsterdam.
It wasn't until 1953 that the
German bunkers were blown up.
1 Museumstraat,
then 42 Stadhouderskade.
The Rijksmuseum.
In 1939,
prior to the German invasion,
the museum transferred the most
important artworks in
its collection
to churches and other buildings
in North Holland province,
while construction work
on state storage bunkers
in the coastal dunes
near Castricum was completed.
Rembrandt's "The Night Watch"
was stored in a castle
in North Holland,
before being transferred
to the underground vaults
in Mount St Peter
near Maastricht.
During the occupation, the Nazis
tried to turn Rembrandt
into a Germanic Hero,
with big celebrations
on his birthday, July the 15th,
now called Rembrandt Day.
German Nazi
director Hans Steinhoff
shot a feature film about
the painter in a studio in
Amsterdam.
Members of the German Army could
enter the museum free of charge.
The occupying authorities banned
the display of works by
Jewish artists,
or that depicted Jewish people.
The museum expanded its holdings
in and after the war with Jewish
owned art works.
The museum had dealings with
the Liro Bank which looted
Jewish assets.
Some artworks were only
returned recently to
their rightful owners.
The Rijksmuseum had to house
several propaganda exhibitions,
including
"The Art of the War Front",
and "Amber: Blond Gold
of the Germanic People".
Children's toys made
by the German Order Police
were also put on display.
The Rijksmuseum mounted
its own exhibitions as well.
The exhibition Spirit of Christ
was closed down
because it included
too many abstract works,
which the Nazis
saw as degenerate.
In 1944, the museum
staged an exhibition
of wrought iron
and cast-iron objects,
primarily because of the
material's bombproof qualities.
The museum closed after
Dolle Dinsdag, or Mad Tuesday,
the Tuesday in September 1944
when public celebrations erupted
after rumours
that the Netherlands was about
to be liberated.
Shortly after liberation,
the "Night Watch" was returned
to the Rijksmuseum by
inland barge.
In October 1945,
the first 26 looted paintings
to be returned from Germany were
welcomed in the Rijksmuseum.
4 and
6 Concertgebouwplein,
formerly Jan Willem
Brouwersplein,
The Concertgebouw.
Many national-socialist events
were held in this building.
In 1942, for example,
it was here
that Dutch nazi Anton Mussert
was declared leader
of the Dutch people.
Shows were often performed
for the German army,
ranging from operas to
"Eleven Maidens dance and sing".
Reich Commissioner
Seyss-Inquart,
the highest German authority
in the Netherlands,
enjoyed visiting
the Concertgebouw.
He planned the building of
a private box for himself in
the theatre.
The conductor of
the Concertgebouw Orchestra,
Willem Mengelberg,
performed for German
organisations in
the Netherlands,
and travelled with the orchestra
for concerts in Germany
and Austria.
The last time that Jewish
members of the Concertgebouw
Orchestra played
was in June 1941.
The programme included
Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony",
the "Ode to Joy"
with the famous line
"Alle Menschen werden Brder",
or "all people become brothers".
The audience applauded
and waved their handkerchiefs
to the fired musicians.
Music by Jewish composers
could no longer be played.
In 1942, sheets of fabric
were used to hide the cartouches
containing the names
of the Jewish composers
Mahler, Rubinstein
and Mendelssohn.
Conductor Willem Mengelberg
appealed to keep the Jewish
members of the orchestra.
Many musicians ended up
in Barneveld,
an internment camp
set up for privileged Jews
who initially
weren't to be deported.
Ultimately, most were sent to
Theresienstadt
concentration camp.
Mengelberg continued to advocate
for Jewish artists,
to such an extent
that the leader of the German
Culture Department said:
"A declaration from Mengelberg
has lost its meaning for us.
He has already helped
too many Jews."
During the last winter of the
war, known as the Hunger Winter,
the cold and lack of electricity
led to the cancellation of many
concerts.
A Christmas concert
did take place in 1944:
"Candles were only lit
at the music stands,
and the atmosphere this created
was less fairy-tale than
ghostly,"
wrote Nel Bakker in her memoirs.
"We sat, cold,
deep in our coats.
The customary murmur of voices
was absent.
The musicians who remained
played like angels.
So, this other
world did still exist.
Scattered around the audience
were German officers,
they too were alone.
Afterwards, everyone left
silently and invisibly in
the dark,
as if we had attended a secret,
forbidden sermon.
Now I was able to face
the remainder of the winter.
The worst time
was still to come."
At the orchestra's first
performance after liberation,
the Dutch Military Authority
forbade the playing of the Dutch
national anthem, the Wilhelmus,
"due to the dubious attitude of
the orchestra during
the occupation".
Mengelberg was banned
from conducting for life,
a punishment that was
later commuted to six years.
Anti-riot squad, go on.
28 P.C.
Hoofstraat. Vineta Bar.
In 1940, this caf was one
of the first in Amsterdam
to hang up signs saying,
"Jews not welcome"
or "No Jews allowed".
Portraits of Adolf Hitler,
Herman Gring
and Anton Mussert,
the Dutch Nazi party leader,
decorated the walls.
The German police often
organised parties in the bar.
39 and 41 P.C. Hoofstraat.
Simons, a shop selling
office supplies and souvenirs.
The partly Jewish family
running the shop lived upstairs,
where they sheltered
three people in hiding.
When roundups of Jews
were taking place,
Eva Broessler-Weissman
would hide in the cellar.
In her memoirs she tells
that a heavy table
was placed on the hatch.
Eva was afraid that if
the Simons family were taken by
the Germans,
she would be stuck there.
The shopkeeper's daughter,
Eka Simons,
was arrested at a deserted house
where she wanted to pick up
valuables belonging to people
who had gone into hiding.
When a senior German officer
visited the shop,
Eka's mother came up with a ploy
for getting Eka out of prison.
The officer in question had
his eye on a large doll in
the shop window.
She claimed that it was for
display only,
and wasn't for sale.
The officer persisted
that he wanted the doll for
his little daughter,
whereupon Eka's mother told him
that her own daughter
had been wrongly imprisoned.
"If she is released, I'll take
the doll from the display,"
she promised.
Eka returned the following day.
157 Churchilllaan, third floor.
Photo studio run by Helmuth
and Annemie Wolff-Koller,
who fled Germany in 1933.
Helmuth was Jewish.
The couple attempted
to take their own life together
on the day of
the Dutch capitulation.
Helmuth succeeded, but Annemie
was alive when the housekeeper
arrived,
and she survived.
In 2008, a box was found
containing portraits
shot by Annemie in 1943.
In most cases, the photos appear
to have been made
for fake IDs.
Many people in the photos are
wearing a yellow star badge on
their clothing.
Families also had portraits made
as a keepsake
for in case they were separated
from each other,
in hiding or after deportation.
89 Linnaeusstraat.
Hospital.
Dutch soldiers
wounded in battle
were treated here in May 1940.
On the 14th of
May, Jewish sergeant
Helmut Hirschfeld
shot himself in the head
and died.
In 1943, nurse Esme van Eeghen
met physician Henk Kluvers here.
She started to help him
smuggle Jewish children
to the northern province
of Friesland.
In 1944 she was betrayed.
The Germans shot her
and threw her body in a canal.
1 Victorieplein.
In 1941 ice cream parlour Delphi
was designated as a "Jewish
premises".
Jews could only enter shops
bearing this sign,
as Anne Frank often did,
according to her diary.
A reader's letter published
in June 1942
in the anti-Semitic magazine
The Foghorn, read,
"As if the sight of all
those stars slurping ice cream
wasn't already
unpleasant enough,
the most scandalous thing is
that all the wrappers and spoons
get thrown onto the street.
I know this is a Jewish habit,
and that they would feel at home
in any pigsty,
but there is still
the occasional Goy living in
the South District."
32 Dijkstraat.
Home of Friedrich Steinbach
and family since 1943,
when living in caravans
was forbidden by the Germans,
who persecuted all people
they called gypsies.
Some Sinti people moved into
deserted houses in the Jewish
quarter.
The Sinti registered here
were captured in May 1944
during the nationwide
roundup of "gypsies".
They were deported
to transit camp Westerbork
and from there to Auschwitz,
where they were all murdered.
Demolished.
6 Havenstraat.
Detention Centre II, better
known as Amstelveenseweg Prison.
Jewish prisoners were forced to
clean the corridors with
toothbrushes.
The women's section
held resistance fighters
such as students Reina Prinsen
Geerligs and Hannie Schaft,
who both carried out attacks
on Dutch collaborators.
Prinsen Geerligs was executed in
Sachsenhausen concentration camp
near Berlin in 1943.
Schaft was shot in the dunes
near Amsterdam
a few weeks
before the war ended.
Other people held here included
Johannes Kleiman and
Victor Kugler,
who helped the Frank family
hiding in the "secret annex".
In 1943 resistance worker
Johan Benders, a teacher,
leapt to his death from
the third floor of the prison
out of fear that
when he was interrogated,
he would reveal the addresses
of people in hiding.
Immediately after liberation,
the Canadian army requisitioned
the prison to lock up war
criminals.
A newspaper wrote in May 1945:
"It is reassuring that all
leadership of the German
security service in Amsterdam
was arrested.
They wore German army uniforms,
hoping they wouldn't be noticed
among the troops being sent
to camps."
A few weeks later one of them,
head of the Gestapo,
Julius Dettmann,
died by hanging himself
in the prison.
151 Koninginneweg,
or Queen's Road,
ground floor.
Home of writer Ed. de Nve.
He set up an escape route
for downed British pilots.
Members of the British Royal Air
Force received instructions
that if they crashed in
the Netherlands they should go
to the "Queen's Road".
The house number, 151,
was sewn into their collar,
to resemble a laundry number.
De Nve, who had contact with
British military intelligence
before the war,
managed to get 13 pilots
across the border.
He also helped Dutch people
escape the country,
like the Jewish
writer Jacques Gans.
De Nve took over the illegal
newspaper Vrij Nederland
or Free Netherlands
after almost all
staff were arrested in 1941.
He was himself caught
a few months later.
Using insanity as a defence at
his trial,
he was not sentenced to death
but imprisoned at
Eickelborn mental institution.
He returned to Amsterdam
shortly after liberation.
Cornelis Krusemanstraat.
In her memoir
"The Year of Hunger",
Nel Bakker wrote:
"In the middle of Krusemanstraat
in Amsterdam,
I suddenly saw a potato...
I picked it up
and carried on walking,
stooped over,
there was no traffic anyway.
There was another one
five metres further along,
and then another.
All in all, I picked up
seven potatoes in the street.
In a state of euphoria,
we carefully chose a book
that would burn long
and well enough to boil them."
The famine known
as the Hunger Winter
started in the autumn of 1944.
The south of the Netherlands
had just been liberated
and neither food nor fuel
could reach Amsterdam,
even less so after Dutch railway
personnel went on strike
to help the allied war effort.
The Germans responded with
a blockade of transport by boat.
The famine was worsened
by the harsh winter.
All public life shut down.
The trams stopped, gas
and electricity were cut off,
garbage was not collected,
the telephones did not work,
children hardly went to school
and women stopped menstruating.
There was a shortage
of food, coal, petrol,
soap, medicine, even coffins.
Many people went to farms
in the countryside
to trade their belongings
for food.
399 Singel.
Local offices of the LO,
one of the largest national
organisations of resistance,
in 1945.
This protestant group assisted
those hiding from the Nazis.
In Amsterdam, they managed
to help 25,000 people.
The group printed a list
of 10 commandments.
"1: You are a guest.
Behave as such,
and fulfil
your responsibilities,
not only in the first week
but at all times.
2: Your presence means that,
to some degree at least,
you will be a burden to
your host family.
Act accordingly."
"3: Always try to be
of service to your host
and hostess.
Take heavy household chores
off their hands.
Having an additional member is
a major imposition for
the housewife.
Lighten her load by helping the
children with their homework.
4: Always adapt to the ways and
routines of the household
you're in,
particularly when it comes
to eating and sleeping.
You must say goodbye to your
personal domestic routines.
5: Do not disrupt
the established patterns of
family life,
do not try to become part
of the family.
This would cause too great
a strain,
certainly in the long term.
Behave as a lodger would.
Retreat to your private area,
to your own
room if you have one.
Be sure to do this when
the family gathers in
the evening or weekend.
6: Do not hang around
the living room or kitchen.
Even if the host and the hostess
repeatedly invite you.
Be firm.
Only ever stay on very rare
occasions or on specific
evenings or afternoons.
Being in close personal contact
for long periods
generally causes annoyance to
one of the two parties involved.
7: Living in hiding requires
strength of character and
self-discipline.
It demands
willpower, understanding
and the ability to adapt
to your surroundings.
8: You will not get along well
without regular pursuits
and a daily routine.
As well as carrying out
your tasks around the house,
you should either learn
additional household skills or
start studying,
preferably a correspondence
course in your own
professional field.
Or else commit
to a long-term hobby.
9: When it comes to going
outdoors, receiving visitors,
sending letters
and any related matters,
always consult your host
and hostess first.
They have the final say.
10: Even if the authorities are
not actively searching for you,
if for example you are hiding to
avoid forced labour in Germany,
do your best to keep
the neighbours unaware of
your presence.
Learn these ten commands
by heart and live by them.
Apply them in
practice every day!"
The LO mostly helped men
who tried to evade forced labour
in Germany.
Only a few percent of the people
they helped were Jewish.
"It was very
difficult to find places
for Jews",
said a member of the group
after the war.
"Almost nobody
wanted to take them."
It is estimated that 12,000
Jewish Amsterdammers went
into hiding,
mostly outside of the city.
A third of them were caught
before the war ended.
Koenenkade.
Amsterdam's
forest, or "Forest Plan",
a park started during
the economic crisis in the '30s
to fight unemployment.
In August 1941,
German air defence brought down
an RAF plane,
which crashed in the park.
Three crew members died.
The Germans set up work camps
at various
places in the new park,
often making use of
existing job creation projects.
In early 1942, a camp was set up
next to the Ringvaart canal
for non-Jewish
political prisoners.
There was a camp for Jewish
prisoners near the Bosbaan
rowing course.
In 1944, there was an additional
work camp for Jewish men over 45
in "mixed marriages",
meaning they were protected
from deportation
by their marriage
to a non-Jewish spouse.
Two hundred people worked there.
It was a so-called
"to and fro camp",
with workers being allowed
to return home in the evening.
Every morning a special tram
would take them to
their workplace.
"We are digging there
on the rowing course,"
Sal Santen wrote in his memoirs.
A pond they had to dig was
locally known as the "Jew Pit".
As a child, Philo Bregstein once
went to the site to visit
his father
Marcel Bregstein, fired as
professor of law at Amsterdam
university
for being Jewish.
Philo wrote of his pride at
his father "wearing boots and
working trousers,
pushing wheelbarrows
like a real labourer."
The violinist Paul Godwin and
other musicians from the camp
formed the Forest Plan Quartet,
which gave house concerts
on Sunday afternoons.
On Dolle Dinsdag, Mad Tuesday,
the 5th of September 1944,
when many people
mistakenly believed
that Amsterdam was about
to be liberated by the Allies,
the German supervisors set fire
to all workers accommodation,
and vanished.
48 Van Spilbergenstraat.
Laundry business and
home of the Vermeulen family.
In 1943,
there were 21 Jews hiding here,
each of them paying 45 guilders
for their expenses.
They earned this money
in various ways, including
making woodcarvings
of Jesus Christ,
the Westerkerk church
and other views of the city.
After the war,
Sjaak de Wolf, who sheltered,
remembered,
"There was no
question of privacy, of course.
We slept on the bare floor,
side-by-side on a threadbare
blanket.
We were young
and not sexually inactive.
Even simply sharing
this kind of intimate moment
could often lead to situations
that upset people.
But necessity knows no law."
One of the people hiding here
became pregnant.
When there was nothing to eat
anymore in the Hunger Winter,
the resistance
found other hiding places.
321 Prinsengracht.
Medicinal rationing office.
After the liberation
of the Netherlands,
people suffering
from famine oedema
could exchange their coupons
for rations here.
One coupon entitled the holder
to a two-week ration
of four tins of condensed milk,
500 grams of sugar,
and 600 grams of biscuits.
384 Prinsengracht,
first floor.
Home of Johanna van
Hal-Veltstra,
or "Auntie Hallie".
She offered shelter to people
in her guest house.
Resistance fighters stayed for
short periods in the front room,
and more long-term Jewish
residents lived in
the rear annex.
Van Hal installed an alarm,
and if she spotted a possible
threat through one of the
peeping mirrors in the window,
she would set it off.
385 to 395 Prinsengracht.
The new Suykerhofje,
known to its residents
as the "Princes' Cloister".
Many of the occupants around
the courtyard were students,
several of whom were members
of resistance groups.
They helped people living
in hiding, here and elsewhere,
and set up an escape route
to Switzerland.
In April 1943,
the German security service
raided the building and arrested
15 people.
One of them was Bram Kuiper,
a biology student and member
of the CS6 resistance group.
He was released after a month,
but rearrested in Belgium
the following summer
while checking an escape route.
In October 1943 Bram
was executed in the dunes,
three weeks after his brother
Sape, a fellow CS6 member.
The Jewish artist Bob Hanf
lived in hiding here.
He was also
arrested in April '44.
Hanf died in September that year
in or on the way to Auschwitz.
763 Keizersgracht.
Jewish artist and writer
Eduard Veterman
ran the "Falsification Bureau"
from this address.
In 1942 he became head
of the drama department
of the Hollandsche Schouwburg
or Dutch theatre,
when only Jews were allowed to
perform and visit the theatre.
One of the last plays
to be performed, in June 1942,
was written by Veterman.
Its title was "Things Won't Turn
out the Way You Expect".
Veterman forged
around 2,000 blank ID cards
for resistance groups.
He also made his own versions
of unknown documents.
Resistance worker Guusje Rbsaam
said after the war:
"Veterman made
Brazilian birth certificates
even though
he'd never seen a real one.
Nobody knew what a Brazilian
birth certificate looked like!"
Some of these "unknown
documents" were used by people
in their contact with the German
lawyer Hans Calmeyer,
who processed petitions
from Dutch people
who contested
their registration as "Jewish".
Veterman himself was exempt
from deportation for a time
because he worked
for the Jewish Council.
In October 1943, Veterman
was betrayed and arrested.
He was sentenced to death
in 1944,
but survived the war
in various German prisons.
In 1946, Veterman
and his wife Katy van Witsen
were killed in a car accident,
in what some people believed
were suspicious circumstances.
Veterman was vocal about
the corruption and collaboration
of people in high places,
and exasperated
by the amateurish performance
of the Dutch secret services
in London during the war.
470 Sarphatistraat.
Cavalry barracks.
During the German invasion
of the Netherlands,
the Dutch army used these
barracks to lock up German
nationals
and members
of the Dutch Nazi party.
During the occupation,
it was requisitioned
by the German army
where they prepared
for "Operation Sea Lion",
the codename for the planned
invasion of the United Kingdom
in 1940.
The Commander Felix Steiner
was also tasked with forming
a Waffen SS division
made up of Western European
volunteers.
This later became the "Wiking",
an SS Panzer Division
that was first deployed
during Operation Barbarossa,
the German invasion
of the Soviet Union in 1941.
Rapenburgerstraat, third floor.
Home of the Tak family.
In February 1941, the Germans
arrested Isaac Tak, a coalman,
during the first raid on Jews
and detained him in
Camp Schoorl in the Netherlands.
From there he was deported to
Mauthausen,
where he died in September.
A German official mockingly
recorded the cause of death as
ulcus molle,
a venereal disease primarily
encountered in the tropics.
Isaac Tak's wife
Bloeme Tak-Philips and
their four children
were transported to Westerbork
in May 1943.
The Germans allowed one of the
boys, Nico, to leave the camp
because he was Bloeme's son from
a marriage to a non-Jewish man,
and was therefore regarded
as half-Jewish.
Nico went back to Amsterdam
to live with an uncle.
Bloeme, Nathan, Suzanna and
Mozes Tak were murdered in
Auschwitz
in August 1943.
Demolished.
25 Amstel.
Department of the Jewish Council
for Travel and
Relocation Permits.
In the spring of 1942
this was one of the 14 locations
where Jews had to buy
yellow badges
in the shape of a star of David
with the word "Jew"
printed on it.
For non-Jews, wearing this badge
was a punishable offence.
Demolished.
In front of 170
Nieuwe Achtergracht.
Dutch Nazi party member
Gerrit Kaldenberg
had been arrested
after the liberation.
On the 9th of November 1945,
just released from prison
and now free on parole,
he was hit by a bullet
in the larynx here.
During the war, Kaldenberg
had ran a guesthouse
where he lured Jews
to come live in hiding
and then betrayed them.
Corner of Weesperstraat
and Nieuwe Keizersgracht.
On the 13th of July 1942,
just before the first train
to transit camp Westerbork
would depart,
fish and fruit
trader Eliazar Moffie
was arrested, standing in
the queue for the headquarters
of the Jewish Council,
for inciting
an anti-German rally.
A Dutch police report
recorded Moffie's words:
"We must refuse
to go to Germany.
They pick up our women
and children at night
because they don't dare to do so
in the daytime.
There will be a revolt.
I hope it starts today."
Moffie was handed over
to the German security police
and murdered in Auschwitz
in September 1942.
His wife and daughters were
murdered there a year later.
Weesperstraat.
Before the war,
the Weesperstraat was a narrow
shopping street
with the nickname
"Jewish Street".
70% of the people in
this neighbourhood were Jewish,
the highest percentage
in Amsterdam.
In February 1941
this area, together with
the old Jewish Quarter,
was cordoned off.
The Germans wanted to create
a sealed ghetto,
like they had done
in Eastern Europe.
The plan was not carried out
after the city administration
objected.
According to the mayor,
a ghetto would be too
disruptive to the infrastructure
of the city.
Moreover, a lot of "Christian
families" would have to
relocate.
In May 1941
the Germans did establish
a so-called "optical ghetto"
by placing signs with the words
"Jewish area", "Jewish Street"
and "Jewish canal" around it.
In 1942
this area became one of
the three areas of Amsterdam
and the rest of the country
where Jews were still permitted
to live.
There were five butchers,
five hairdressers and two cafs
designated here
as "Jewish premises".
The street signs were removed
at the end of 1943,
when the deportations had ended,
and the Germans
declared Amsterdam "Judenrein",
or "free of Jews".
During the Hunger Winter,
Amsterdammers stripped
all vacant houses
of wood and other materials.
After the war, the city
authorities decided not to
rebuild the area.
They said there were already too
many social and
traffic-related issues
before the war.
All the buildings were
demolished,
and the street was widened.
In 1950 a monument
was erected at this spot,
the monument of
Jewish gratitude.
It was founded by Jewish
survivors and dedicated to
non-Jewish helpers.
Over the years, this monument
was more and more seen as wry,
especially because there was
no monument that commemorated
Jewish, Sinti and Roma victims
individually.
In 2021
the monument of Jewish gratitude
made way for the National
Holocaust Names Memorial.
The Gratitude monument
was moved to a spot nearby.
Ceintuurbaan.
On the day Germany capitulated,
the 4th of May 1945,
a German patrol started shooting
at people celebrating out on
the streets
after the start
of curfew at 7pm.
A bullet struck Sigi Mendels,
a Jewish boy who had ventured
outside for the first time
after hiding for years.
Eight months later
he died of his injuries.
The Germans had imposed a curfew
at the start of the occupation.
No one could be out
between midnight and 4am.
Only members of the air raid
service were allowed outside.
From September 1944
the curfew started at 8pm,
sometimes 7pm as a punishment.
The Germans hung up placards
stating that anybody
out in the street could be shot.
9 Pijnackerstraat.
Vredeskerk, or 'Peace Church'.
In 1940, young parishioners
set up a resistance group
known as
the 'Dutch Orange Army'.
They planned acts of sabotage,
and an escape to England.
Someone betrayed them, however,
and several members were
arrested.
Frank and Jan Fontaine,
Jan Kootwijk and Jaap Besters
did not return
from the concentration camps.
Catholic priests were not
allowed to perform
the sacraments
for members of
the Dutch Nazi party, the NSB.
In July 1942 in all Catholic
and most protestant churches
in the Netherlands
a letter was read out loud
condemning forced labour
and the deportation of Jews.
The Nazi's retaliated by
arresting and deporting more
than 200 Jews
who had
converted to Catholicism.
The church bell was removed
in 1942.
Prior to the German invasion,
the Dutch authorities registered
all church bells in
the Netherlands
with an eye to melting them
down if necessary in
the event of war.
It was partly
thanks to this register
that in just six months
the Germans were able to remove
almost 7,000 of the country's
9,000 bells from church towers.
Two thirds of those bells were
melted down and turned into
armaments.
There was a saying that 'When
the bells are gone,
the war is done',
meaning that if the Germans
needed to melt down church bells
for metal,
their chances of winning the war
couldn't be good.
Hekelveld.
On the night of
the 4th of May 1945,
a patrol of
the German Order Police shot
dead nurse Annick van Hardeveld.
Van Hardeveld, 21, was
a messenger for the resistance.
She was cycling to the north of
Amsterdam to pass on a message
about the impending surrender
of the Germans.
Van Hardeveld was wearing
a Red Cross uniform
so she could be outside
during curfew.
Over her uniform,
she had thrown a Dutch flag.
56 Stadhouderskade.
Headquarters of the 2000
resistance group in 1945,
in the home of
the Verwoerd family.
After the couple's son Leo was
caught with forged identity
documents,
the German security service,
the SD,
raided the building
on the 9th of March 1945.
The Verwoerds quickly took
Rob Waaker, a young Jewish boy
living in hiding with them
to their neighbours.
Each member of the 2000 group
had their own code number
recorded in a register.
The "key" for the register was
hidden beneath the entrance to
the office.
It was imperative that this key
didn't fall into the hands
of the SD,
so on the 10th of March
several members of the group
forced their way into
the building.
In the ensuing gunfight, SS
Hauptscharfhrer Ernst Wehner,
a criminal investigator
with the SD, was killed.
The SD retaliated
by executing 30 prisoners
from Weteringschans prison
in the Eerste Weteringplantsoen.
They included
Leo and Henk Verwoerd.
The Germans gathered passers-by
and people who lived around
the park
and forced them
to watch the executions.
Anyone who averted their eyes
was "kicked into
the right direction,
or worked over
with a rifle butt".
The bodies fell onto
the mountain of rubbish
that had built up in front of
an air raid shelter in
the preceding weeks
because
it wasn't being collected.
A few days later,
unknown people draped
a Dutch flag over this spot.
Jacoba van Tongeren,
the leader of the 2000 group,
watched the executions
from her hiding place
in a first-aid post
beneath a nearby bridge.
"I cry like I've
never cried before,"
she wrote in her memoirs.
After, she entered
the headquarters via
a neighbouring building
and took away the key
to the code register.
5 Spinozastraat. Ground floor.
Home of the renowned cancer
researcher Nathanil Waterman.
The Antoni van
Leeuwenhoek Hospital had to fire
him in 1941.
In September 1943,
Waterman was part of the last
large-scale deportation of Jews
to Westerbork.
In November, however,
the Germans sent him back to
Amsterdam
to set up a laboratory
in his home
to pursue his research into the
carcinogenic effects of dyes.
He kept his laboratory mice in a
special enclosure in the garden.
Waterman's wife
Mien Waterman-Rippe
had to remain in
the transit camp as a hostage.
Both she and her husband
survived the war.
Two of their children
were murdered,
Elizabeth Fischer-Waterman
in September 1942 in Auschwitz,
Dolf Waterman
in November 1942 in Mauthausen.
Their son Lon Waterman,
an architect, survived.
In 1962 he designed
the first Holocaust memorial
in the Hollandsche Schouwburg
or Dutch theatre,
the main deportation centre
in Amsterdam.
Nieuwmarkt.
This square became a hub
for black market activities.
In August 1942 a man
was arrested here
for selling ration coupons,
necessary for
buying food staples
like bread and milk.
A police officer recognised him
as Jan Catoen,
a notorious burglar
who had escaped from Amersfoort
concentration camp.
After a show trial,
a German court sentenced Catoen
and two accomplices to death
for robbing a rationing office.
They were executed
in September 1942.
Over the course
of the occupation,
four children were shot dead
on Nieuwmarkt.
Four-year-old Annie Meijer
was gunned down during a raid
by the German Order Police
in September 1944.
Teenagers Bari Baars and Isral
Deegen died in March 1945,
when Germans started shooting
dumdum bullets at black
marketeers.
On the 12th of April 1945,
16-year-old Alex Evers was
walking across Nieuwmarkt on
his way home.
It was two minutes past 8pm,
two minutes past curfew.
The German Order Police
started shooting.
A bullet hit Alex in the hand,
and he made his way into the air
raid shelter in the middle of
the square.
When he came out on the other
side, the Order Police shot at
him again.
Alex died in an ambulance cart
on the way to the hospital.
Europaplein,
formerly Westerscheldeplein.
On the 11th of November 1940,
a small Italian Air Force plane
that had been part
of an air raid over England
landed on this square
with engine trouble.
From July 1942,
the square was used
as an assembly point
during roundups of Jews.
People were transported by tram
from here to
Amsterdam's Central Station,
from where the train to transit
camp Westerbork departed.
Young people aged 16 and over
had to walk.
- 8
- to 10 Haarlemmerweg.
Wester Gas Factory.
This gasworks was one
of the three locations
where Amsterdammers had to hand
in their bicycles in July 1942.
Before the war there were around
300,000 bicycles in Amsterdam.
After, there were 160,000.
During the Hunger Winter
people tried to steal coal
from the factory.
Police would shoot at
the thieves, sometimes with
fatal consequences.
no more fascism now
no more fascism now
no more fascism now
Next stop,
Amsterdam Muiderpoort.
Oosterspoorplein.
Muiderpoort train station.
Starting in October 1942,
at least 11,000 people
were deported from this station,
mostly to
transit camp Westerbork
in the north-east
of the Netherlands
and from there to the killing
centres Auschwitz and Sobibor
in occupied Poland.
Staff from the Jewish Council
were posted in the hall of
the station
to register the "departers",
who were required to hand over
the keys to their homes.
Their houses would be sealed
until the furniture and other
belongings were registered,
taken away and often
transported to Germany.
Wibaustraat.
Renamed Weesperpoortstraat.
In 1942 the Germans
changed the names of 18 streets
named after Jews.
They also changed the name of a
street named after a socialist,
alderman of
Amsterdam Floor Wibaut.
He had been a prominent member
of the Dutch Labour Party.
36 and
38 Plantage Kerklaan.
Civil Registry Office.
The German occupiers
decreed that all citizens
had to carry their identity card
with them at all times.
Cards of Jewish citizens were
marked with a large black
letter J.
This new Dutch-made card, with
a photo and two fingerprints,
was extremely hard to forge
and it could always be compared
against the records in
the Registry.
In 1942, the PBC,
a group of artists who
specialised in forged documents,
started to plan an attack
on the Registry Office.
On the 27th of March 1943,
resistance fighters
disguised as police officers
entered the office
and "neutralised" eight guards
from
the Amsterdam Police Battalion.
They injected
them with a sedative
and laid them out
in the garden of Artis Zoo.
The attackers doused
the filing cards with benzene
and set TNT charges.
At 11pm, loud explosions were
heard, and a fire broke out.
"Amsterdam enjoyed the bonfire",
wrote the underground paper
The Parole.
The attack became one of the
best-known acts of resistance
and boosted morale.
"One good little piece of news",
Anne Frank wrote in her diary
in the secret annex.
The fire however did not destroy
all the cards,
neither did the overzealous
actions of the fire brigade.
Ultimately, only 15% of
the records were permanently
destroyed.
Moreover, the Germans kept
separate sets of records
elsewhere.
Willy Lages, the head of
the German security services,
offered a reward
of 10,000 guilders
for information leading
to the capture of the attackers.
24 Vondelstraat, ground floor.
In a telex message
to SS leader Heinrich Himmler
dated the 2nd of April 1943,
Hanns Albin Rauter, the SS and
police leader in
the Netherlands, stated:
"Over the course of the night,
several arrests were made
in Amsterdam and Utrecht.
As a result, it is certain
that three perpetrators
of the sabotage arson attack
on the Civil Registry
of Amsterdam are in custody."
One of those arrested
was Sjoerd Bakker,
a fashion designer and tailor.
He made the replica
Dutch police uniforms
worn by the attackers
here in his studio.
He and 11 others involved
in the attack were executed
in the dunes
on the 1st of July 1943
and thrown into a mass grave.
At his own request, Bakker wore
a pink shirt for his execution.
When the grave was discovered
after the war,
the pink shirt
helped identify the group.
225 Kerkstraat, ground floor.
Home of Henry van Adelsbergen,
a Jewish man in a "mixed"
marriage.
While being held
at camp Westerbork,
he was forced to choose between
being deported or being
sterilised.
He opted for sterilisation
and returned to Amsterdam.
In March 1943, Van Adelsbergen
divorced his wife
and moved elsewhere.
In 1944, he was summoned to
the headquarters of
the German police.
There he accidently ran
into the occupant
of the apartment above him
on Kerkstraat,
Branca Simons, a Jewish informer
who betrayed people
to save herself.
Simons reported that since her
former neighbour was divorced,
he was no longer exempt
from deportation.
Van Adelsbergen was arrested
at once.
He died in March 1945
in Vaihingen concentration camp
in Germany.
After the war Simons
was sentenced to death
but was freed in 1959.
Demolished.
26 Vegastraat, ground floor.
Dina Gobitz-Wagenaar
and four of her children
lived in hiding here
in their own home
following their escape from
the Dutch theatre
deportation centre.
After the war, Dina's daughter
Carla Kaplan-Gobitz remembered:
"Resistance people had created
all sorts of hiding places in
our house,
and they worked so well
that more and more people
came there to hide.
Some of them had been previously
hiding in a sewage pipe.
I found living in hiding awful.
Everyone was scared,
and I wasn't able to play.
You weren't allowed
to open the curtains.
We had to be really quiet,
because it had to look like
nobody was living in the house."
Kaplan-Gobitz
and her sister claimed
that a German guard
named Alfons Zndler
had helped them escape
from the deportation centre.
But when they and several others
put Zndler forward
for a Yad Vashem award in 1993,
which would have him honoured
in Israel
as "Righteous
among the Nations",
it sparked a storm of protest.
The opponents said that
this member of the SS
only helped others in exchange
for alcohol or sex.
It did turn out that Zndler
and two other guards
had been arrested in 1943
for having sexual relations
with Jewish women,
and given a ten-year
jail sentence by a German court.
In a 2012 interview,
resistance worker Harry Cohen,
a courier for the Jewish
council, said about Zndler,
"Yes, he did save people,
but when he was up for being
honoured with
the Yad Vashem award,
I protested.
That was a step too far.
Come off it,
I mean he was in the SS and
he got to make life and death
decisions!"
201 and
203 Van Ostadestraat.
Herman Elte School.
In September 1941
the Germans decreed
Jewish children had to go
to separate schools.
The Amsterdam city
administration obliged
by creating
more than 40 new schools,
mostly in
existing school buildings,
for around 7,500 pupils.
Jewish schools that existed
already before the war,
also became part of the system.
After the deportations began,
the classes got smaller
each day.
In September 1943,
all Jewish schools had closed.
44 Albrecht
Drerstraat, first floor.
In 1943, Sonja van Hesteren
moved into what she described
as a "luxurious room"
in an apartment formerly
occupied by a Jewish family.
She worked
at the Hausraterfassungstelle,
the department that registered
the contents
of the homes of deported Jews.
After the war, Van Hesteren
claimed that to keep on
living there,
she had to join the staff
of the German security police.
There she helped to entrap
resistance workers.
In April 1944 she made
a phone call to Henk Dienske,
a leader
of the LO resistance group,
pretending to be the daughter
of a communist leader.
She said she had a message
for him from her father.
Dienske agreed to meet her
and was immediately arrested.
Dienske died in
1945 in Beendorf,
a subcamp of Neuengamme
concentration camp in Germany.
After the war, Van Hesteren was
sentenced to 12 years in prison.
154 Beethovenstraat,
third floor.
Home of physician Johan Strak.
He was a member of
the Dutch Nazi party, the NSB,
and of the SS, and a confidant
of SD chief Willy Lages.
In 1942 he became
Amsterdam's alderman
for public health.
As a physician,
Strak carried out assessments
of women who wanted
to marry members of the SS,
to determine whether they were
of "pure Germanic race".
In 1942 it was his task
to determine whether foundlings
might be Jewish.
He decided a baby known
as "Remi van Duinwijck",
named after the address
he was found at,
was Jewish,
although he was not circumcised.
Strak, however, said the boy
had "Jewish ears".
Remi was murdered in 1943
in Sobibor.
His real name, Koen Gezang,
was only discovered in 2002.
After the war, Strak was
sentenced to six years in
prison.
Witnesses
on the front row.
- 3
- Amstel, ground floor.
Bookshop owned by Louis Lamm,
one of the largest Jewish
antiquarian bookshops in Europe.
- Do I have
Bruna Dos Santos Vieira? - Yes.
- And Magteld Elsemiek Jakobs?
- Yes.
Well, please rise.
Give each other your right hand.
Look each other in the eyes.
And listen to the questions
I'm going to pose to you.
Do you, Bruna...
When
the deportations began,
Lamm's upstairs neighbour,
resistance worker Cas Oorthuys,
found a safe address for him,
but Lamm, who had fled Germany
in 1933, declined the offer.
Lamm and his daughter Ruth
were murdered in Auschwitz
in November 1943.
Then I declare as
a register of
the Amsterdam Records Office
that you are hereby joined
in registered partnership.
The bookshop was
"purged" by the Reichsleiter
Rosenberg Taskforce,
a Nazi organisation that looted
Jewish cultural property.
After the war, Lydia
Oorthuys-Krienen remembered:
"Once they'd been taken away,
there were suddenly ladders
leaning against the front of
the building,
and a long wooden chute
ran from the window,
over the quayside,
to a flat barge."
"They spent days using the chute
to chuck all those
valuable books onto the barge."
Demolished.
Van Woustraat.
In September 1942,
a police officer arrested
journalist Philip Mechanicus
for not wearing
a yellow star badge.
Two members of the Dutch Nazi
party had recognised him
and pointed him out in a tram
or on a tram stop.
Mechanicus was sent
to Amersfoort concentration camp
and from there to Westerbork.
Mechanicus kept a diary that was
smuggled out of the transit camp
and published after the war
as "Waiting for Death".
"I feel as if I'm live reporting
from a shipwreck",
he wrote from the camp.
In October 1944, Mechanicus
was shot dead in Auschwitz.
149 Van Woustraat.
Koco, one of two ice cream
parlours run by German Jewish
refugees
Ernst Cahn and Alfred Kohn.
The windows of their other
parlour on Rijnstraat
were smashed in February 1941,
so the owners got together
a group of regular customers
to protect the shops.
A couple of days later,
a gang of Dutch Nazis passed the
parlour, singing as they went,
so the owners closed the shop.
Someone started pounding
at the door,
and the defenders of the parlour
sprayed ammonia gas at them
using a cylinder kept in
the shop to cool ice cream.
But instead
of the expected Blackshirts,
they were German Order
Police officers.
For the Nazis this event
was one of the grounds
for the first roundup
in the old Jewish Quarter,
on the 22nd and
23rd of February.
Ernst Cahn was condemned
to death by a Nazi court.
On the 3rd of March 1941,
he became the first resistance
fighter in the Netherlands
to die in front
of a firing squad.
Alfred Kohn died in 1945,
probably on a death march
from Auschwitz.
9 De Mirandalaan, formerly
Burgemeester van Leeuwenweg.
Amstel Park swimming pool.
From the 21st of May 1941,
the Germans banned Jews from
all municipal swimming pools.
The only pool at which they were
allowed to swim was this one,
on Mondays, Wednesdays
and Fridays.
Less than a month later,
they were also banned from this
last pool.
All swimming pools closed
in the autumn of 1944
due to the lack of gas
and electricity.
During the Hunger Winter,
people chopped down trees and
bushes around the outdoor pools
for firewood.
The wooden diving board
was chopped up as well.
In the 1930s,
the pool had become known
as the De Miranda Pool,
after its instigator,
socialist alderman
Monne de Miranda.
He was arrested in July 1942
and taken to Amersfoort
concentration camp,
where he was subjected to such
severe physical abuse
by other Dutch captives
that he died ten days later.
In 1946 this pool
was officially named
De Miranda Pool.
A few years later the street
was also named after him.
Demolished.
Binnen Bantammerstraat,
known since the 1920s
as Tong Yan Kai,
or "Street of the Chinese".
Several hundred Chinese sailors
who were unable to leave
Amsterdam
due to the war,
managed to scrape a living
by running small businesses.
Unemployed men had to work
for the Germans.
Forty Chinese-Dutch weddings
were held in Amsterdam
during the war.
In 1943, Storm, a magazine
for the Dutch SS, wrote:
"How can it be that the Dutch
women do not hang their heads
in shame,
that they throw themselves
into the arms of an easterner,
who is, furthermore,
little more than a beggar."
Amsterdam's oldest
Chinese restaurant,
Kong Hing at number 11,
closed during the Hunger Winter.
After the capitulation of Japan,
the Chinese in Amsterdam
held a grand victory party
on Nieuwmarkt and Dam Square.
26 Molenbeekstraat,
second floor.
Home of Philip van der Kar,
Sophia van der Kar-Polak
and their children
Sieg and Mary.
Sophia Polak managed to obtain
a so-called "Calmeyer Stamp",
which indicated that she
was only "partly" Jewish.
She and her sister
gained this status
on the basis
that their biological father
was not Samson Polak,
but the deceased
Albertus Demmenie,
a non-Jewish man her mother
would have had an affair with.
Demmenie's son
agreed to tell this lie.
To be granted their stamps,
Sophia and her sister Stella
had to undergo a "physical
racial verification procedure"
at Amsterdam's Zentralstelle,
the Central Office
for Jewish Emigration.
The two middle-aged sisters
were instructed to lift up
their skirts
for Ferdinand Aus der Fnten,
the head of the Zentralstelle.
With their skirts raised,
they had to walk up and down on
stockinged feet
so that the SS-Hauptsturmfhrer
could determine
whether they had "Jewish legs".
The Van der Kar-Polak family
produced forgeries of ID
documents,
and always had people hiding
with them, crowding the rooms.
"I spent at least three years
sharing a bed with my parents",
Mary said after the war.
Once the "houseguests" had been
there for a few days,
Sophia and Mary would take them
out of the city
to hide in the countryside.
On the four occasions that the
authorities raided the house,
the guests hid on the roof,
behind the chimney.
Niersstraat, first floor.
Home of Simon de la Bella,
a Jewish senator for
the socialist party.
When he was arrested
in July 1940,
he tried to kill himself
by taking poison,
but he did not succeed.
He died in 1942
in Dachau concentration camp
in Germany.
De la Bella's
daughter Carla joined
the resistance,
spreading illegal papers
and transporting weapons.
She later said:
"Before the war my parents
had authority over me,
and I wasn't
allowed to do anything.
I realise now I was thrown
into total adulthood.
There were no boundaries
anymore.
You could do what you wanted.
Compared with before the war
it was mayhem.
Everybody was living
with everybody else,
and you slept with everybody.
If you had a bottle of drink
it was party time.
It was a madhouse.
It was also our way to respond
to the tension of
resistance work."
Valentijnkade,
Zeeburg Jewish cemetery.
The cemetery was full in 1914
and was only used
sporadically thereafter.
Around 100,000 people
are buried here.
In 1942, the German army
repurposed part of the cemetery
as a training ground.
Illegal burials were performed
at the Jewish cemeteries
in nearby Diemen and Ouderkerk,
but it has not been proved that
such burials took place here.
After the war, a story went
around that during
the Hunger Winter
a German man
let a cow graze here.
According to this tale,
people from the neighbourhood
stole it and slaughtered it.
In 1956, the local authorities
acquired a part of the cemetery
to build a road.
Under rabbinical supervision,
the graves in this part
were exhumed
and the remains moved
to the cemetery in Diemen,
along with what few headstones
were left.
58 Nieuwe Keizersgracht,
Headquarters of
the Jewish Council,
the organisation the Nazi's
forced upon Jewish
people in 1941
to enact their policies.
The Council remains
controversial to this day.
Was the organisation
collaborating
or did it just try
to prevent the worst?
The public entrance
was at basement level,
and the queues sometimes
stretched all the way to
Weesperstraat.
Everyone wanted to work for
the Jewish Council because
initially,
Council personnel
and their families
were exempt from deportation.
The organisation created
numerous departments all over
the city,
from Travel Permits to
the Distribution of Vegetables.
In its decisions, the Council
tended to favour the elite.
Chairman David Cohen defended
this policy in his memoirs:
"Of course one should value
every life equally,
but a life that has value
for other people as well
must remain more protected
in times of war
than the life of a person that
is only important to himself."
Some reports about what was
happening in the camps in
occupied Poland
did reach the Jewish Council,
but they were not believed.
In 1947,
a Special Court of Justice
placed David Cohen
and Abraham Asscher,
the two chairmen,
in pre-trial detention.
They were
released a month later.
That same year,
a Jewish Community Tribunal
found that Cohen and Asscher
"had failed in a world
that had itself been at fault".
You're welcome.
15 Valeriusplein.
Amsterdam's Lyceum.
In 1940, Jewish teachers
were fired,
as were all civil servants,
in one of the first measures
to isolate the Jews.
In 1941,
an official farewell ceremony
was held in the assembly hall
for the 72 Jewish pupils.
The headmaster, Piet Gunning,
had previously taken them away
for a week to Cloud Land,
the school's
place in the country.
Gunning was fired in 1942
and interned for the crime
of "Judenbegnstigung",
doing favours for Jews.
After the liberation
he was reinstated.
Various German
organisations requisitioned
the school,
including the Order Police
and the Air Force.
The soldiers were billeted
to the classrooms,
while the officers lived
at the director's residence.
The Germans bred pigs
in the basement,
and built a dog kennel
on the grounds.
Barbed wire fences
protected the building.
Lessons for the pupils
continued elsewhere.
Several of the
school's teachers and students
were involved in the resistance.
In December 1942,
two students from the school
travelled to Camp Westerbork
with a microscope for their
biology teacher Jacob Heimans,
because he missed it so much.
They also passed on
a forged baptism certificate
to the mother of a classmate,
in the hope
she could be "Aryanised".
Pay attention.
Yes, go on.
- Stay triumphant.
- Yeah.
Corner of Apollolaan
and Beethovenstraat.
From September 1944,
there was an unspoken truce
between the German
security police
and the Dutch armed resistance:
if there were no violent attacks
against the occupying forces,
then they wouldn't carry out
any executions.
The KP resistance militia
weren't intending
to kill Herbert Oelschlgel:
they were going to kidnap him.
This infamous SD detective
spoke Dutch
and controlled a network
of informers.
The KP wanted him to reveal his
informers and then release him.
They shadowed the detective
for four weeks
and made a plan to seize him.
But on the 23rd of October 1944
he didn't appear
at the expected time.
The KP found him at a caf
in the city centre.
They tailed him back
to the South District,
but then their target realised
he was being followed,
so, at the corner of Apollolaan
and Beethovenstraat,
they pounced on him.
In the ensuing
struggle in the dark,
the bottle of chloroform
the KP intended to use
to sedate the detective
fell to the ground and broke.
One of the attackers
shot Oelschlgel in the head.
His body remained where it lay,
in front of the tobacconist
at number 6 Beethovenstraat.
Retaliation for killing a German
was always greater
than for killing a Dutchman.
So early the next morning,
the SD took 29 captives from
Weteringschans prison to
Apollolaan.
Not all of them were on the list
of "death candidates".
One was a thief.
The SD ordered local residents
to come out of their houses
and watch,
and shot the prisoners dead
in rows of ten
in front of the air-raid shelter
in the public garden.
The Germans also set fire
to two townhouses on the corner,
one of which had belonged to
the Jewish couple Mina and
Louis Stibbe,
who had taken their own lives
in 1942.
Unbeknownst to the SD,
the villa was now occupied
by a Dutch collaborator.
He tried to get compensated
for the loss,
but SD leader Willy Lages said:
"what we destroy, the city
of Amsterdam has to pay for".
On Monday the 7th of May 1945,
Amsterdammers flocked
to Dam Square
to celebrate the liberation
of the Netherlands.
But in Amsterdam the German army
was still present and had not
yet been disarmed.
That afternoon, a reconnaissance
unit of the British army
arrived at Dam Square,
where bystanders climbed
onto their cars.
According to some eyewitnesses,
once the British unit departed,
a cart arrived on the square
carrying women who had had
German lovers.
After the war,
Karel Marquenie remembered,
"The women were shaved
and tarred.
This was carried out
in a none too gentle manner,
blood was streaming
over their faces.
The women screamed
and called out for help
as the Germans looked on."
It is not known
what the exact cause was,
but the German Navy troops
in Paleisstraat
who had witnessed everything
from the windows and the roof
started to shoot at the crowd,
a gunfight with the Dutch
resistance followed.
Bystanders sought refuge
wherever they could,
even behind lamp posts
and behind a street organ.
More than 30 people were killed.
Dam Square.
In June 1945, a three-day party
was organised
by "The committee for the
celebration of the liberation
of the capital
from German oppression".
On the last day,
Queen Wilhelmina appeared
on the balcony
of the Royal Palace,
and looked at a parade
of Allied troops
and Domestic Armed Forces,
followed by
a procession of floats.
On one of the floats Indonesians
stood in traditional costume
holding up the sign
"Indonesia oppressed".
During the war, Indonesians
that studied in the Netherlands
had joined the resistance,
under the motto,
"First free the Netherlands
and then Indonesia".
The so-called "Dutch Indies" had
been occupied by Japan in 1942,
but the freedom asked
by the Perhimpoenan Indonesia
was freedom from
the Dutch coloniser as well.
41 Ringweg,
formerly the rural part
of Sloten village.
On the 15th of July 1943,
CS6 resistance group members
Sape Kuiper
and Johan Kalshoven
shot policeman Hendrik Blonk and
his wife Johanna Blonk-Martens,
at their home.
They both survived the attack.
Blonk was a notorious detective
at the Amsterdam Police
Department for Jewish Affairs.
He claimed to have arrested at
least 100 Jews living in hiding.
After the war, Blonk was
sentenced to eight years
in prison.
He was released in 1949.
Kalshoven and Kuiper were caught
and executed in October 1943.
Demolished.
7 Gabril Metsustraat.
In 1944 this Christian school
for girls
was claimed as
a training facility
for drivers of the NSKK,
the National Socialist
Motor Corps,
a paramilitary organisation that
supported the German army
and transported
German officials.
Around 10,000
Dutch men enlisted,
often after they were found
unfit for service
in the Waffen or Armed SS.
Polderweg.
Base of
the Dutch military police
taken over by the Germans.
It was used as an assembly point
during mass roundups.
On the night
of the 2nd of October 1942,
the occupiers detained
Jewish men here
from work camps
in and around Amsterdam.
The next day these men
and their families,
who were taken
from their homes,
were sent
to Westerbork transit camp.
All Jews living in Amsterdam
who didn't have a "Sperre",
an exemption from deportation,
were ordered to report here
on Thursday the 20th of May 1943
and hand in their house keys.
From that day onwards
no Jews were permitted
to reside in Amsterdam,
unless they had explicit
permission from
the Zentralstelle,
the Central Office
for Jewish Emigration.
Only a thousand people
turned up that day.
Ferdinand Aus der Fnten,
the head of the Zentralstelle,
responded by ordering
the Jewish Council
to select 7,000 people
from its own ranks,
amounting to half
of the Council's staff.
They had to report here
on the 25th of May.
This time, around
1,600 people showed up.
The German authorities
had expected this
and had already made plans
for a mass roundup
in the old Jewish Quarter.
At two in the morning
the next day
they started rounding people up.
They gathered
them in the synagogue,
and used trams to transport
around 3,000 people
to this base
or straight
to nearby Muiderpoort station,
where trains were waiting
to take them to Westerbork.
Some people managed to escape
with the help
of Jewish council staff.
Sam de Hond pretended
he had to take a group of people
to the Dutch theatre
deportation centre.
When they got there
he told them to flee.
After liberation,
this building became Camp East,
an internment camp
for "political delinquents".
In May 1946,
Wietze Zootjes, a notorious
member of the Landwacht,
a police force made up
of Dutch Nazis,
managed to escape
through a hole he made
in the floor of his room.
In August the same year,
ten members of the NSB escaped
by using stolen pliers to bend
the window bars of the camp.
Demolished.
I can see you're very busy.
321 Keizersgracht.
"The Red House" was bought
by artist Han van Meegeren
in 1943.
He sold his versions
of paintings by old masters
to Dutch museums and to
high-ranking Nazi customers
like
Reich Marshall Hermann Gring.
His studio was situated
further along the canal,
and the artist
held wild parties there.
Shortly after liberation,
Van Meegeren was arrested
for collaboration.
To convince the court
he did not collaborate,
the artist revealed
his paintings were forgeries.
To prove this, during his trial
he painted a new work
in the style of Vermeer.
The artist was given one year
in prison,
but died before he could
begin his sentence.
Westerstraat, ground floor.
Fish shop run by Isac Gerritse.
From June 1942
only Jews could shop here.
A year later, Gerritse
was deported to Westerbork.
He was murdered in Auschwitz
in August 1943.
Following his deportation,
the local authorities
bricked up the property
to protect it from looters.
After the war,
the municipality presented
an invoice for this work
to Isac's
only surviving son Maurits,
who had to pay 1,100 guilders.
In 1943, the city put aside
70,000 guilders
for measures preventing people
from removing timber
from unoccupied buildings.
These included building walls
around houses,
but an official
report pointed out
that this was in fact
counter-productive,
because once the looters
were behind the walls,
they could go about
their business undisturbed.
Vliegen Woods,
formerly IJ-Woods.
On the 2nd of July 1942,
Abraham Prins,
a physiotherapist,
cycled through this park,
which, like all parks,
Jews were forbidden to enter
from September 1941.
The Amsterdam Police Battalion
was on drill exercise in
the park,
and an officer arrested him.
Prins claimed he had forgotten
that he was not allowed to be in
the park.
He was deported to Westerbork.
On the way to Auschwitz,
he threw a note from the train
that reached
his non-Jewish wife.
It said: "Better let
sister drown herself."
Prins was murdered in Auschwitz
in September 1942.
In February 1945 the Order
Police were looking for men
for forced labour in Germany.
During the roundup,
Willem Schreuder fled
into the park and was shot.
Schreuder died within minutes.
Many trees in the park were
chopped down during
the Hunger Winter.
92 Jacob Obrechstraat,
Central Jewish Hospital.
On the night
of the 28th of September 1943,
the hospital was
cleared of patients.
The Germans then ordered
that it be used
for the sterilisation of
Jewish women in mixed marriages.
Some members of
the hospital staff
who had already
been deported to Westerbork
were brought back
to carry out this work.
The operations were led
by a Dutch Nazi surgeon.
Later in the war,
the Nazi-run welfare
organisation, the NVD,
used the building
as a maternity clinic
for women who had become
pregnant by German soldiers.
After the war, it opened again
as a Jewish hospital
and took in concentration camp
survivors.
Demolished.
1 Adama van Scheltemaplein.
In June 1942, this vacant school
became the "Zentralstelle
fr Judische Auswanderung",
the Central Office
for Jewish Emigration,
the German office
that organised the deportations.
Jews could only enter it
through the backdoor.
The first 4,000 people
were called up to report
for so-called labour service
in Germany,
mostly Jews who had fled
Germany,
on the 5th of July 1942.
When fewer and fewer people
responded to such calls
to report,
the Germans introduced
a new approach.
In the evening regular Amsterdam
police officers
now took people
directly from their homes,
without prior warning.
For this task, supervised
by the German Order Police
also men from the new Amsterdam
Police Battalion were used.
This unit became especially
known for its brutality and
corruption.
Around 18,000 Jewish people were
deported from the Zentralstelle,
where they were held in the
gymnasium or in the courtyard.
Journalist Heinz Wielek, who had
worked for the Jewish Council,
wrote shortly after the war
about the sinister, SS-like
atmosphere in the building:
"How many times a frightened,
silent mass of people
stood in the courtyard
throughout the night,
packed so tightly
nobody could move."
When the Dutch theatre became
the main deportation centre,
the Zentralstelle remained
the bureaucratic core
of the Holocaust in Amsterdam.
The theft of Jewish belongings
was also orchestrated
from the Zentralstelle.
In November 1944,
the building was destroyed
during an Allied air raid
on the German security service
headquarters across the street.
Mosveld.
The grounds
of Volewijckers football club,
which owes its reputation
as a "resistance club"
to Douwe and Gerben Wagenaar.
Douwe chaired the club,
Gerben was an important figure
in the communist resistance.
In July 1943,
the grounds were hit
during an allied bombardment.
A month later,
the Volewijckers played a match
against a club from The Hague
wearing orange shirts
rather than their usual
green and white kit.
The authorities arrested
Douwe Wagenaar immediately after
the match
and held him for three days.
The club won the national
championship in 1944.
176 P.C.
Hoofstraat, ground floor.
The socialist Professor
of criminology Willem Bonger
and his wife
Maria Bonger-van Heteren
attempted to take their own
lives here on the 15th of
May 1940.
He wrote in a note:
"I see no future for me anymore,
and will not bow down to those
thugs who are going to be in
control now."
Maria Bonger-van Heteren
survived.
Demolished.
108 Gerrit van der Veenstraat,
formerly Euterpestraat.
Second floor.
Home of the Klingensteins,
a Jewish family who had
fled Germany in the '30s.
On the 15th of May 1940,
six members of the family ended
their lives by gas asphyxiation.
Their housemaid Karoline Falk
also chose death.
128 Willemsparkweg,
ground floor.
Studio Larette.
Sales Centre
for Conjuring Tricks
belonging to the Hungarian
magician Cornel Hauer.
Hauer was a baptised Catholic
in a "mixed marriage",
which protected him
from deportation.
In May 1943,
two German soldiers
rang at the door,
whereupon Hauer
used a pistol to kill himself.
There had been
German soldiers before,
but they came
to buy magic tricks.
Now the officers came
because Hauer, who was deaf,
had been loudly listening to
English radio,
which was forbidden.
The men had
heard it from outside.
6 Deurloostraat, ground floor.
Home of the Jewish family
Wolfsbergen.
Ellie, Willy, their son Fred,
who was 17,
and his grandmother Rika
ended their lives
by gas asphyxiation
on the 14th of May 1940.
In a suicide note
addressed to their neighbours,
Ellie Wolfsbergen wrote:
"Before we depart,
I send you a final greeting.
It is impossible for us
to live as outcasts.
Fred agrees with us,
otherwise
we would have not done it.
Any of you who wish to do so,
may take a keepsake
from a drawer or wherever else,
be it silver or anything at all.
Take what you like."
104 Eerste Helmersstraat,
Wilhelmina Hospital.
In 1942, the Germans changed
the name to West hospital.
Just after
the Dutch capitulation,
a lot of people were brought
here following failed suicide
attempts.
156 suicides were recorded
in 1940 in Amsterdam,
most of them
in the south of the city.
128 of these cases
concerned Jewish people.
Often, entire families died,
including children.
The cause of death
was usually gas asphyxiation,
sometimes a sedative
or poison was used.
Several people drowned
themselves in the river Amstel.
The Germans installed an Air
Force military hospital here,
with around 800 beds
and its own German personnel.
An auxiliary hospital was opened
elsewhere in the city
for Amsterdammers.
Almost done.
Captured resistance
fighters who were injured
were also
treated in this hospital.
The resistance managed
to free some of them.
In November 1944
there was not enough
German personnel left
to treat wounded soldiers,
so Dutch nurses
were assigned to the task.
Nurses who refused to do this
work were suspended or fired.
The soldiers were not allowed
to return to their units,
but would be deployed
in the defence of Amsterdam.
213 Nieuwe Herengracht,
framing shop of
Benjamin de Vries.
He was murdered in Sobibor
in 1943.
The house became
a temporary refuge
for people who escaped from the
Dutch theatre deportation centre
but didn't have a place to hide.
After the war, De Vries'
son-in-law Jac van de Kar,
a bicycle courier
for the Jewish Council, said:
"During the day the escapees
would either leave of
their own accord
or we would telephone
their relations,
who came to collect them.
As a rule, the freed people
had no luggage,
and their clothes, which stank
and were crumpled,
had to be cleaned."
Demolished.
Singel, ground floor.
Home of Willem Arondus,
an artist and the writer
of the Brandarisletter,
one of the first
illegal publications.
Arondus became a leader
of the PBC resistance group,
which started
with forging identity papers.
He also took part in the attack
on the Civil Registry.
The authorities arrested him
the month after the attack,
and on the 1st of July 1943
he was executed in the dunes
together with 11 others.
The day before the execution,
Arondus urged his lawyer,
resistance worker Lau Mazirel,
to let people know
after the war that
"homosexuals are no less
courageous than other people."
31 Roelof Hartstraat,
third floor.
Home of nurse Antje Roos.
In 1942, Bernardine
Bloemgarten-Hertog
started hiding here.
After the war, her son Salvador
described what he saw from
the window
on the 14th of July that year,
during a roundup
by the German Order Police:
"What struck me most
was the pride and dignity
with which our people
went to meet their fate,
straight-backed
and, as it were,
negating the presence
of the uniformed guards.
It all became too much
for Roos.
She yelled out
'Murderers, murderers',
and we had to pull her away
from the window
because the guards
adopted a menacing stance."
The Germans
carried out this "razzia"
because not enough Jewish people
had reported
for forced labour in Germany.
800 people were arrested
and threatened to be sent
to Mauthausen in Austria,
a concentration camp that was
already known and feared.
In the end,
enough people appeared
to fill the first train
to Westerbork,
and most hostages were released.
Roos was involved in the attack
on the Civil Registry.
She was arrested and
sentenced to a year of labour
in Ravensbrck
concentration camp.
Upon her return
she resumed her resistance.
Bernardine Bloemgarten-Hertog
was caught elsewhere.
In May 1943 she was murdered
at Sobibor.
45 and 47 Victorieplein.
The 12-storey house,
known as the "Skyscraper".
The tenants in the 24 apartments
included...
number 45, eighth floor.
Home of Stefan Schlesinger,
a graphic designer,
and his wife Anna Kerdijk,
a translator.
They were both murdered
at Auschwitz in 1944.
From early 1943 onwards,
Viennese refugee
Irene Hellmann-Redlich
hid in this apartment.
Hellmann moved again
in 1944,
but went back to the apartment
to pick something up
and got arrested.
Hellmann was also murdered
in Auschwitz.
Number 45, fourth floor.
Home of Anthonie Donker,
a writer who urged
all writers and other artists
to resist joining the Nazi-run
Chamber of Culture.
Only members of this
organisation could perform,
exhibit or publish their work.
Donker wrote in a manifesto
that art should not be
subordinated to political
principles.
After it was published
in February 1943,
Donker was fired
as professor of literature
at the University of Amsterdam
and interned at a hostage camp.
He was released by mistake.
Hiding here was the Surinamese
writer and resistance worker
Albert Helman.
He was a well-known
anti-fascist.
Just before the war
he had published the book
"The Suffering of Millions:
The Tragedy of Jewish Refugees".
Number 47, fifth floor.
Famous singer Julia Culp and
her sister,
pianist Betsy Rijkens-Culp,
went into hiding in 1942.
An intervention
by Willem Mengelberg,
the conductor
of the Concertgebouw orchestra,
and Wilhelm Furtwngler,
the conductor of
the Berlin Philharmonic,
meant they were able to return
to the "Skyscraper".
Under the name Cabaret Flore,
they would give occasional
concerts
on Sunday afternoons
in the bicycle shelter.
Number 47, seventh floor.
Home of dentist Davy Schaap,
Debora Schaap-Ossedrijver,
and their children Franz
and Josephina.
They were murdered in Auschwitz,
Sobibor and Oberlangen
concentration camps.
Number 45, tenth floor.
Home of
Gerben Sonderman, a pilot.
During the German invasion
in May 1940,
he shot down
three German planes.
Sonderman was the right-hand man
of Piet Six,
the leader
of the OD resistance group.
In 1944 he installed
a radio transmitter
in a vacant apartment
in this building
to send messages to London.
During transmissions there would
be a British radio operator
in a Royal Air Force
reconnaissance plane
circling Amsterdam.
On the day
the country was liberated,
Sonderman flew
a celebratory round
over Amsterdam
in a small sport plane.
609 and 611 Keizersgracht.
Home of
the Fodor art collection.
Prior to the German invasion,
the artworks were stored
at other museums.
The building
became the head office
of Amsterdam's
Air Raid Defence Service,
set up to help civilians
after a bombardment.
In every quarter of the city
the Service built shelters
and installed a small office,
where first aid could be given.
Volunteers made their rounds
every night.
Resistance workers
often took this job,
because it meant they could be
legally outside during curfew.
At headquarters compulsory
courses in self-protection
were given,
and the organisation placed
sand buckets all around the city
for extinguishing fires.
They announced
in the newspapers:
"Citizens must ensure
the sand is not used
for other purposes or spread
around by children at play."
During the war,
the air raid sirens went off
around a hundred times
each year,
but Amsterdam
was not bombed often.
The largest air raid
took place in July 1943.
The allied bombs were meant
for the Fokker aircraft factory,
which the Germans had taken
over, in the north of the city.
But due to low visibility
and possibly the inexperience
of the American crew,
all bombs fell
on a residential area
near the factory.
Around 200 people died.
a church, a police station
and a few hundred houses
were destroyed.
The municipality relocated
the homeless
in the houses that stood empty
after the deportation
of their Jewish inhabitants.
A week later
planes of the RAF
did manage to hit the target
and destroyed
most of the Fokker factory.
After the war this building
housed
the Evacuation Department,
which was tasked
with finding homes
for people that had been living
in hiding.
14 Kleine-Gartman Plantsoen.
Detention Centre I,
better known
as Weteringschans Prison.
In the German
section of the jail
political prisoners and
resistance members were
detained.
The "Jewish barrack", a shelter
without any sanitary facilities,
stood in the prison yard.
A single cell could contain
up to 16 inmates.
Jewish prisoners were forced
to walk around the yard
for hours at a time chanting
"I am a Jew. Beat me to death.
It's my own fault."
The German police detective
Kurt Dring
kicked a pregnant woman
so ferociously
that she suffered a miscarriage.
Resistance fighters
were held in "hunger cells"
to force confessions.
After the war,
Anton Beekman wrote:
"There was a constant
smell of food
rising up from a grate in
my cell. It drove me crazy."
Prisoners would communicate
with the outside world
through letters smuggled out
in the laundry,
which their families
had to clean at home.
Prisoners designated
as "Todeskandidaten",
or "death candidates",
could be executed in retaliation
for attacks on Germans
by the resistance.
If that happened,
the wives of the executed men
could collect their wedding
rings here the next day.
The resistance made two
attempts to free comrades from
the prison.
The first, on the night
of the 1st of May 1944,
led by Gerrit van der Veen,
failed when he had to shoot
an unexpected watchdog,
and the sound
alerted the guards.
In the second raid in July,
a Dutch prison guard
was supposed to help a group
led by Johannes Post,
but he informed his superiors
of the plan,
and the group was ambushed.
Around 25,000 people
were incarcerated at the prison
over the course of the war
most of them, including
Anne Frank and her family,
were held here
for just a few days.
In September 1944 the rumour
went around that the Allies were
about to liberate Amsterdam.
This prompted panic
among the occupiers.
The prison director
had most documents burned,
and the portrait of Hitler
taken down.
In September and November 1944,
many inmates held on
minor charges were dismissed.
A day after liberation,
all the prisoners were released.
The Dutch Domestic Armed Forces
immediately brought
new captives to the prison,
like mover Abraham Puls,
whose company had taken
belongings from the houses of
deported Jews.
So-called "moffenhoeren",
or "Kraut whores",
women suspected of having had
sexual relations with
German men,
had their heads shaved
in front of the prison gates.
Partly demolished.
Jonas Danil Meijerplein.
This square between
the Sephardic and the Ashkenazi
synagogues
was named after the first Jewish
lawyer in the Netherlands.
The German authorities
changed the name to "Houtmarkt",
or Wood market.
The first mass roundup of Jews
in Amsterdam
took place in this area,
the heart of
the old Jewish Quarter,
on the 22nd and 23rd
of February 1941.
The German Order Police arrested
more than 400 Jewish men
in the streets.
They forced them to sit
hunched on the ground,
and beat and kicked them.
The men were later transported
to the concentration camps
Buchenwald and Mauthausen,
where most of them
would perish soon after.
This first "razzia" was one of
the causes for
the February Strike.
The underground Communist Party
initiated the protest against
the German treatment of Jews.
On the 25th of
February most tram drivers
refused to depart
and many workers
in public services, factories
and shops joined demonstrations.
The next day almost
300,000 people were on strike.
This massive protest
took the occupiers by surprise.
The second day the strike
was harshly suppressed
by the German Order Police,
who opened fire at
people gathered in the streets.
Nine people died.
The Germans later executed
four of the strikers,
and imprisoned many.
They fired the mayor
and the head of police
and replaced them
with Nazi sympathisers.
Oosterpark.
In March 1944,
the Germans closed the park
and started using it
for their vehicle fleet.
On
the 4th of May 1945,
the German Order Police
started shooting from the park
at people stealing wooden blocks
from between the tram rails,
to use in their stoves at home.
Johan van Es, who was cycling
past, was fatally wounded.
296 Amsteldijk
and DR. C.W. Ittmannpad,
Rozenoord plant nursery.
In 1944
the Germans started
carrying out executions
on this plot.
As a rule,
the Germans executed people
at the site of an attack
by the resistance,
but late in the war
a lack of fuel and cars
sometimes made this impossible.
Approximately 140 men
were executed at Rozenoord.
The identities of a hundred men
are known.
Most were prisoners
from Weteringschans prison.
The largest group, 53 men,
were shot here on the 8th of
March 1945,
as a retaliation for an attack
on SS leader Hanns Rauter.
Executions were generally
carried out early in
the morning,
with the members of the firing
squad selected the night before.
To refuse was to risk
one's own execution.
The German Order Police officer
Jupp Hennebhl
refused to participate
on three occasions.
In his memoirs,
this "good German",
as he was described,
recalled that
"I would sometimes question
what I was doing:
by refusing
I wouldn't save any lives,
but I would run the risk
of being shot,
depriving the resistance
of their contact man."
Frans Hendrikx, the director
of the adjacent tennis park
Amstel View,
witnessed several executions.
After the war he wrote:
"From my hiding place close by,
I could observe
the grim, ashen faces.
I could see the tangled hair
on their bare heads,
and their terrified eyes staring
in glaring fear into
the distance."
Demolished.
5 Beursplein.
The stock exchange.
The Liro Bank,
a Jewish owned bank,
was taken over by the occupiers
and used as a "looting bank".
Jews had to hand over all
their money and other valuables
like stocks, art and jewels
to this bank,
with which the Germans
then financed their deportation.
The bank traded the Jewish
shares on the stock market.
The chairman of the Stockbroking
Association agreed to this.
Jewish-owned
securities were offered
at reduced prices
on special "discount days".
Trade at the stock market
pretty much came to a standstill
in September 1944.
The brokers played dominoes
until liberation.
99 Gerrit Van Der Veenstraat,
formerly Euterpestraat.
In 1941 this school for girls
became the Amsterdam
headquarters
of the "Sicherheitspolizei"
and the "Sicherheitsdienst",
the German security police
and security service.
This was one of the most feared
buildings in Amsterdam.
The SiPO and the SD focused
on tracking down
all enemies of
national socialism,
including communists,
Freemasons
and Jehovah's witnesses.
They were all interrogated
in this building.
The cells were in the basement.
A former captive wrote
after the war:
"First put him for a few days
in a low-ceilinged cell
half-filled with water,
where it is impossible to sit,
or lie, or lean,
in the pitch dark,
without food or drink.
Then, at the most unexpected
of moments,
take him
from this filthy open sewer,
deal him a few vicious blows to
the head with a length of chain
and, if necessary,
give him a good kicking
in the belly.
Then truly
this 'filthy dog' will talk."
On the 26th of November 1944
the school was bombed
by the British Airforce
at the request
of the Dutch resistance.
The RAF opposed
the bombing of a target
in a residential area,
but carried it out at the
insistence of Prince Bernhard,
the supreme commander of
the Dutch Domestic Armed Forces.
More than 50 people were killed,
including
several people in hiding,
and four German policemen.
Forty buildings were destroyed.
According to an eyewitness
the citizens of Amsterdam
nonetheless
rejoiced at the sight.
Shortly after liberation,
this street was named
after executed artist
Gerrit van der Veen,
one of the best known members
of the resistance.
1 Paleisstraat.
De Grote Club,
a gentlemen's club.
Before the war
it refused Jewish members.
The German navy
confiscated the building
and in 1943 it became
one of the strongholds
in the German defence
of Amsterdam.
It was from this building that,
on the 7th of May 1945,
German soldiers started to shoot
at the crowd
that had gathered on the square
to celebrate their liberation.
72 Middenweg.
Frankendael estate,
city plant nursery.
The open-air theatre in the
garden was used by Jeugdstorm,
the youth wing of the NSB,
for events such as
summer Solstice celebrations.
Demolished.
Haarlemmerweg
near Coronelstraat.
Following a resistance attack
on the railway near Sloterdijk,
on the 15th of December 1944
the occupiers retaliated
by executing three resisters:
Pieter Elias, a police officer,
Matthijs Verkuijl, the leader
of a BS resistance group
and his son Henk Verkuijl.
Their bodies were left
on the ground for two days
to intimidate all Amsterdammers.
The SD gave local police
the following instructions:
"These three corpses lying here
belong to terrorists
who we shot dead.
Your task is to ensure
no one comes near them
or takes them away.
Only staff from Bleekemolen
funeral services
are allowed to
remove the corpses."
Saint Nicholas!
Saint Nicholas!
876 Prinsengracht,
ground floor.
House of Tom Koreman
and Yara Koreman-Wainschtok.
Hiding place of Dio Remins
and Nel Hissink,
who worked for the CS6
and PBC resistance groups.
In March 1943,
this house was the base for the
attack on the Civil Registry.
Hissink and Remins were
arrested after they were
betrayed
in the summer of 1943.
Remins was executed on the 1st
of October 1943 in the dunes.
Hissink was executed in
November 1943 in Sachsenhausen.
The SD arrested Tom Koreman
after they found a pistol
in his office.
Remins had given it to him
after the attack on
the registry.
Koreman was also executed.
The Germans
arrested Yara Koreman as well,
but she was released again.
Yara took her own life
a few weeks later.
She was pregnant
with their first child.
In 1940 the Germans commanded
all streetlights and buildings
be blacked out,
to make it difficult
for allied planes
to use the light of the city
for navigation.
Shops sold special paper
and curtains
to make sure
no light shone out.
The police imposed heavy fines.
In the ensuing dark,
a lot of people got lost
or fell in the water,
the most in 1940,
when 55 people died of drowning.
Books on astronomy were popular
at lending libraries during
the war.
The blackout meant the stars
were clearly visible at night.
Lindengracht.
On the 4th of February 1945,
a patrol squad from
the Dutch police
started shooting at a group of
men who were sawing down trees.
They needed the wood
for cooking and heating.
A police report states
that Johannes Eijkelboom,
a warehouse clerk,
suffered gunshot wounds to
the head and chest, and died.
Jeroenensteeg.
The body of
an unidentified woman
was found here
on the 18th of December 1944.
A police report states:
"Probably a Jewess,
age 60 to 65,
broad cheekbones, grey hair.
The fact that the streets were
wet and the soles of
her slippers dry
suggests that the body
was placed here."
The woman was
Judith de Hond-Walvisch.
She had been living in hiding
around the corner.
She died of blood poisoning
resulting from a head injury.
Her sons laid her body in the
alley without identity papers.
- 7
- Bloedstraat, ground floor.
Brothel room of sex worker
Catherina van Heerden.
On the 10th of July 1942,
the 19-year-old Jewish bicycle
repairer Leendert van West
was arrested because
he had paid two guilders here
for "carnal intercourse
with an Aryan woman".
Marriage and sexual relations
between Jews and non-Jews
were forbidden in
the Netherlands in March 1942
by the Blood Protection Law,
one of the Nuremberg Laws.
In May 1943, Van West
was murdered in Sobibor.
218 and 220 Keizersgracht.
Church and monastery
of the Redemptorists.
Base for the Donia Department,
an investigative unit set up
by resistance leader
Walraven van Hall
and run by police officer
S. van der Wind,
who had gone underground.
His job was to assess
the trustworthiness
of resistance members.
From September 1944,
they hid the administration of
the National Support Fund here,
the underground institution
led by banker Van Hall
that organised and distributed
money for the resistance.
Sarphatipark.
The park was named
after Samuel Sarphati,
a Jewish
physician and city planner.
In 1942
it was renamed Bollandpark,
after an antisemitic
philosopher.
The statue of Sarphati
was removed.
Artists Else Berg
and Mommie Schwarz
both had a studio
overlooking the park.
Some of the last paintings
they made, in 1942,
were landscapes of the park
in the snow.
Berg and Schwarz were arrested
in their home in November 1942,
and murdered a week later
in Auschwitz.
The park was an assembly point
at one of
the last large roundups.
Early in the morning
of the 20th of June 1943,
loudspeaker cars drove around
the south and east of Amsterdam
ordering Jews to
leave their houses.
More than 5,000 people
were captured that day.
344 Kinkerstraat, second floor.
Home of Jan Bogaard,
a guard at
Weteringschans prison,
and his mother
Johanna Bogaard-van Klingeren.
Jan Bogaard promised to help
the KP resistance group
led by Johannes Post
to attack the prison
on Friday the 14th of July 1944.
To ensure his compliance,
the plan was that Bogaard's
mother would be brought to
a safehouse by Post
on Friday morning.
She was to be killed
if her son betrayed them.
But Mrs Bogaard said she was
only willing to go the next day.
Despite this,
the attack went ahead.
And Bogaard
indeed betrayed them.
The next morning, Johannes Post,
not knowing
about the betrayal yet,
was waiting in the Kinkerstraat
for the car
to collect Bogaard's mother
when he was arrested.
Post was executed
the following day in the dunes
together with other members
of his group.
Johannes Post's brother Marinus
monitored Bogaard's apartment
after the arrest,
but the German security police
had already found Bogaard
a safe address in Utrecht.
After the war,
Bogaard was sentenced to death.
He was executed in 1947.
Spaarndammerstraat.
Roman Catholic Association
clubhouse.
The building housed a famine
clinic in the summer of 1945.
Corpses were often found
floating in the water in this
neighbourhood
during the Hunger Winter.
Not all of these
people had drowned.
People sometimes threw
the bodies of deceased
family members
into the water,
either because
there was no possibility
of transport to the cemetery,
or to be able to continue
claiming ration coupons
for the deceased person.
Demolished.
44 Agamemnonstraat.
De Blauwe Reiger nursery school.
After liberation, this was the
base of the Auxiliary Police,
a group of volunteers
who helped guard detainees,
buildings, and food transport.
They also dealt
with Canadian soldiers,
who came to Amsterdam
on leave from Germany.
The Canadians were not allowed
to mingle
with the population in Germany.
The Leave Centre was located
in the Olympic Stadium.
A volunteer wrote in his report:
"The neighbourhood around
the stadium is the setting for
repugnant scenes
involving soldiers.
The soldiers have no hesitation
in taking girls
of 18 or 19 years old with them
for the entire night
and keeping them with them.
The girls are very often found
in an intoxicated state.
On one of these occasions, even
the Canadian Military Police
felt compelled to intervene,
and to subject the cars
parked here to an investigation.
The results were astonishing.
From each car there appeared
two to four girls."
188 Hoogte Kadijk.
In 1941 the second
Municipal Central Kitchen
opened in this power station.
In October 1944
the gas supply for individual
households was cut off,
and suddenly 440,000
Amsterdammers became users of
the kitchens,
whose number rose
to more than 15.
To distribute the food,
schools and other
public buildings were used.
The menu in October 1944:
Monday cabbage with potatoes,
Tuesday porridge,
Wednesday carrots with potatoes,
Thursday beets with potatoes,
Friday cabbage with potatoes,
Saturday pea soup,
Sunday porridge.
When there were no potatoes left
in 1945,
the kitchens served sugar beets
and tulip bulbs.
Partially demolished.
552 Herengracht.
Fired Jewish radio presenter
Gustav Czopp
started to produce
and sell boardgames.
The shop, Varit,
became a cover
for resistance activities.
Czopp was betrayed
and in 1944 perished in Dachau.
Action!
Camperstraat, third floor.
In late 1943,
a baby named Charles Viskoop
was hiding here.
His mother had placed him
in the care of Adrie Bijmoer
soon after he was born.
They were betrayed
by Roza Busnach,
a Jewish woman who had become
an informer for the SD.
On the 6th of December 1943
the Henneicke Column carried out
a raid at this address.
Bijmoer brought the baby to
the Police Department for
Jewish Affairs.
From there, Charles was taken
to Weteringschans Prison,
where Janny Moffie-Bolle,
a nurse
who had been arrested
a few days earlier,
had to look
after him in her cell.
On the 24th of December,
baby Charles was put on
transport to Westerbork.
He died in January 1944
in Auschwitz.
His mother
Veronica Viskoop-de Brave
had already been killed there
in November 1943.
His father Sem Viskoop
was murdered in the same camp
in February 1944.
After the war, Busnach was
sentenced to two years in
prison.
Demolished.
The Krugerplein lay
in the middle of
the Transvaalbuurt,
a neighbourhood with a large
Jewish population before
the war.
In 1942, this area
became "Jewish area II",
the last place where Jews were
allowed to live in
the Netherlands.
The square was an assembly point
during roundups.
After the war,
Greetje Papegaaij-van der Meer
remembered:
"The day came
when it was our turn.
My mother was expecting
with my little brother.
She was heavily pregnant.
We were already sitting
in the trucks
when we saw the German officers
discussing something.
They were scared that my mother
was going to give birth in
the truck,
and that it would cause trouble.
Then they threw
all three of us off."
Krugerplein, ground floor.
On the night
of the 31st of January 1945,
a group of some 50 people
forced open the door
of the bakery here.
A police report records that
"Approximately 300 loaves
and a bag of flour were taken."
31 Plantage Middenlaan.
The crche.
A day care centre,
from September 1941
only for Jewish children
and Jewish staff.
In October 1942
children under twelve
whose parents were detained
in the crowded
Dutch theatre deportation centre
across the road were kept here.
The director of the crche,
Henriette Pimentel,
and her staff
worked with employees of
the Jewish Council in
the Dutch theatre
and several resistance groups
to save around 600 of these
children
once the parents of the children
had given their permission
and they were secretly stricken
from the records.
Some children were smuggled
from the crche
in washing baskets or rucksacks.
Others escaped in the arms of
a carer while she hopped
onto a tram,
or while taking
a fresh air break,
others disappeared through
the gardens into the building
next door,
the Reformed
Teachers' Training College.
It was easiest to find homes
for babies.
Blond children,
known as "tea substitutes",
were sent to the northern Dutch
province of Friesland,
dark-haired children,
or "coffee substitutes",
went southwards,
to the province of Limburg.
All 70 children who were present
on the 23rd of July 1943
were deported,
along with most remaining staff
and the director.
The crche was closed
permanently in September 1943.
Demolished.
24 Plantage Middenlaan.
The Hollandsche Schouwburg,
or Dutch Theatre.
This theatre was renamed the
Jewish theatre in October 1941
and was only open to Jewish
performers and Jewish audiences.
The newly formed
Jewish Symphony Orchestra
played here for instance,
many of whose members had been
part of
the Concertgebouw Orchestra
but were fired
because they were Jewish.
They could only perform music
by Jewish composers.
In July 1942 the theatre was
changed into
a deportation centre.
It was renamed Umschlagplatz
Plantage Middenlaan,
or Plantage Middenlaan
Transfer Facility.
The facility's first staff
members were the actors from
the theatre.
People were
detained at the theatre
for anything from a few hours
to a few weeks.
The average stay was five days.
Usually, three to four hundred
people would be held here at any
one time.
But that figure sometimes rose
to 1,400.
When evening came,
the chairs were stacked up
against the walls
and straw mattresses
were brought out from the wings,
and arranged on the floor.
When they were deported,
the prisoners either walked
or were taken by tram or truck
to one of
Amsterdam's train stations.
The guards had their own rooms
on the upper floor.
The Jewish manager of
the facility, Walter Susskind,
would frequently supply alcohol
to the guards
to get them drunk,
and arrange
visits by sex workers
to keep them occupied
in their rooms.
Several hundred people managed
to escape from the theatre,
most of them with the help
of Jewish Council staff.
Many of the escapees
were recaptured.
A Dutch Jew Hunter would get
seven guilders and 50 cents
for every person he brought in.
Wim Henneicke and his group
captured more than 8,000 people
before the resistance
killed him.
Several people killed themselves
in the theatre,
for instance
by jumping of the balcony.
In April 1943,
the CS6 resistance group tried
to set fire to the theatre,
but the blaze
was quickly extinguished.
The deportation centre
was in operation for 16 months.
Around 50,000 Jews
were deported from here,
usually first
to transit camp Westerbork
and from there to concentration
camps and killing centres
in occupied Europe,
mainly Auschwitz and Sobibor.
The last time people
were deported from the facility
was in November 1943.
After the war the new owner
wanted to reopen the theatre,
but some public outrage
prevented this.
In 1962 a memorial was installed
in the ruined building,
which since 1993 includes a wall
with all the family names
of deported Jews.
Vondelpark.
Many of the luxurious townhouses
surrounding the park
served as quarters
for German officers.
They also confiscated
the pavilion in the park.
In 1943 German soldiers
exhibited toys there
that they made
in their spare time.
The Dutch Nazi party, the NSB,
held midwinter celebrations
in the park,
to amplify
their Germanic heritage.
In July 1943
The Jewish Weekly announced
in the "You need
to know" section that,
"The thoroughfares
in Amsterdam's Vondelpark
are considered to be
part of the park,
and these roads are therefore
off-limits for Jews."
The park was closed
in November 1944,
because "trees were being sawn
and chopped down everywhere".
Auctions were even held
at which it was possible
to place orders for trees.
Following the closure, a German
encampment and vehicle park
was set up
at the south end of the park,
cordoned off with fences
and barbed wire.
The closure of the park
benefited the bird population.
Four new species arrived,
including the oriole and
the cuckoo.
186 Willemsparkweg.
In 1941 men who wanted
to join the Dutch SS
underwent a physical
assessment here.
In total around 25,000 Dutch men
volunteered
to fight in the Armed SS
on the eastern front.
In 1942
this building became
the regional headquarters of
the Jeugdstorm,
the Nazi youth organisation.
Boys aged 16 to 18
could sign up here for "Germanic
defence sport camps" in Germany.
An advertisement promised:
"You will return toughened up
and strong!"
In 1943 this became
the headquarters for girl
members only.
The boys went to a bigger
building on Keizersgracht,
the headquarters
of the now forbidden boy scouts.
Minerva Harbour.
In the early morning
of the 6th of May 1941, four men
Mickey Beelaerts van Blokland,
an army officer
who had joined the resistance,
Govert Steen, a pilot,
Wijbert Lindeman,
an aircraft mechanic,
and aircraft builder
Wim Boomsma,
stole a German seaplane from
here and flew it to England.
The pilot had never flown
a seaplane before.
Beelaerts van Blokland
discovered the plane,
a Fokker T-VIII,
while on a bicycle trip.
The men used
an inflatable mattress
to get to the plane
in the dark.
The plane was emblazoned
with swastikas,
and when they reached England
they were shot at.
The passengers responded
by waving a Dutch flag.
Steen landed the plane
on the beach at Broadstairs,
in south-east England.
Steen retrained in England
as a Royal Air Force pilot.
In 1942 he was shot down
in France.
His body was never found.
Blokland became commander
of the Prinses Irene Brigade,
a Dutch military unit
largely made up of volunteers
who took part
in the liberation of Europe.
500 men from Suriname,
then a Dutch colony,
volunteered for the Brigade,
but were refused.
Piet Gerbrandy, prime minister
of the Dutch government
in exile,
said he did not want "n-words"
in the Brigade.
They might offend the volunteers
from South Africa.
The Dutch government in London
did accept the money
brought together by people
in Suriname
to buy a Spitfire airplane.
Hembrug.
In September 1944,
the German army
placed explosives
in the main support column
of the railway bridge
over the North Sea Canal.
The Dutch government in London
asked the resistance in
Amsterdam to sabotage this.
On the night
of the 27th of September
two members
of the Neptune swimming club
smeared themselves
with Vaseline and a dark dye,
swam to the column,
and let 400 boxes
packed with explosives
sink to the bottom of the canal.
When the Wehrmacht found out,
four German soldiers
guarding the bridge
were executed
for dereliction of duty.
The Germans set explosives
on the bridge again.
Resistance fighter Lies Schouten
sprayed water
from the bridge
into one of the ducts,
hoping this would cause
a short circuit
if the bridge would be blown up.
She received help
from a German guard.
Demolished.
West Harbour Way,
formerly 201 Hemweg.
The Ford factory produced
lorries with caterpillar tracks
and other vehicles
for the German army.
In 1944, almost
all the machinery
was shipped off to Germany,
as happened with the equipment
of most factories in Amsterdam.
After the liberation,
the factory's directors
were arrested for collaboration,
but they were released
soon afterwards,
as were most large-scale
economical collaborators.
From the 8th of May 1945
the Canadian Army detained
German prisoners of war here.
With the permission
of the Canadians,
a German court-martial tried
marines Bruno Drfer
and Rainer Beck here.
They were deserters who had
reported back to their unit
after liberation.
Beck and Drfer
were sentenced to death,
and on the 13th of May a German
firing squad executed them.
Rainer Beck had joined the navy
because he was partly Jewish
and thought he would be safer
in the army.
He was rehabilitated in 1997.
Demolished.
115 to125 Amstel.
Carr theatre.
In November 1940
the trams stopped running
after 7:30pm.
"Without trams, I can't
survive," claimed the director
of the theatre.
Matinees frequently sold out,
but the evening performances
were almost empty,
so the late shows were put on
at an earlier time.
Carr continued to be
exceptionally busy.
People craved entertainment.
In 1942, comedian Lou Bandy,
one of the stars of the theatre,
was arrested
after imitating the walk
of Reich Commissioner
Seyss-Inquart, who had a limp.
Bandy was not allowed
to perform anymore.
In 1943 the German
police raided the theatre
several times during matinees
of Circus Strassburger,
searching for men who were
evading forced labour in
Germany.
When a raid occurred,
staff would take male visitors
to the stalls,
where they quickly put on
a Circus uniform.
The Jewish owners
of circus Strassburger
had fled Germany in 1935.
In 1939
they transferred ownership
to their non-Jewish impresario.
Carr theatre had to close
in autumn 1944.
The first big show
after the war was called
"The lights are on again".
104 to 114 Nieuwe Keizersgracht.
Dutch-Jewish Hospital.
This was the largest
Jewish hospital in Amsterdam,
with almost 300 beds.
In 1942 and '43,
Jewish doctors tried to protect
people from deportation
by carrying out fake operations,
putting
unbroken legs in plaster,
and administering medication
that induced fever.
A few of these "patients" died.
The hospital was closed
in August 1943.
Demolished.
88 Vijzelstraat.
HaKo, corset
shop of Hendrik Koot.
The shop windows were decorated
with portraits of Hitler.
Koot was a member
of the NSB blackshirts
and had died following clashes
in the Jewish Quarter
in February 1941.
According to the Nazi press
Jews had bitten him to death.
The NSB gave Koot
a grand funeral.
The procession passed
his corset shop.
Demolished.
Rivierenbuurt.
In 1942, the Rivierenbuurt
in the south of Amsterdam
was selected as one of
the city's three Jewish areas.
The neighbourhood had a large
Jewish population before
the war.
In the '30s,
many refugees from Germany
settled here.
Now "Jewish Quarter III
contained three hairdressers,
nine butchers and five cafs"
designated as "Jewish premises",
where only Jews could shop.
Following the introduction in
May 1942 of the yellow
star badge,
some people called this area
"the Milky Way".
In October that year,
the German authorities forced
all remaining Jewish residents
of Jewish Quarter III
to move to Jewish Quarter II,
the Transvaalbuurt
in the east of the city.
34B Reguliersgracht.
Unica fraternity house.
In 1943 students had to sign
a declaration of loyalty
to the occupiers.
Those who refused had to report
for forced labour in Germany.
A lot of students
went into hiding.
After most students
had left the house,
resistance worker Ivo Schffer
created shelter
for 12 Jewish refugees
on the upstairs floors,
which had a separate entrance.
They included Gideon Kahn
and Judica Kahn-Kalker,
the wife of Arnold Kahn,
who had perished
in Buchenwald in 1941.
The Kahns had been neighbours
of the Schffer family.
Ivo Schffer installed an alarm
and built secret hiding places
in the house.
The residents
would use a stopwatch
to practice reaching their
hiding place within two minutes.
They were never found.
In 1945, a gable stone was added
to the faade of the building
depicting
St George and the Dragon,
accompanied by the Latin motto
"Submergo ut emergam",
I submerge so I may rise again.
Leidseplein.
Physician Frits Dekking was
walking on Leidseplein in 1942
when he witnessed
a lifechanging event.
"I saw in front of me,"
he wrote in his memoirs,
"a detainee being pushed to the
ground by a German policeman,
who then kicked him in the face.
Not just once, but continuously,
with his rotten
German military boots.
And I was just standing there,
and I did not do a thing.
I simply stood there, frozen.
I spent that day wandering
around Amsterdam, thinking,
'You just stood there
like a schmuck,
and you can't go on like this.'
So, from then on I engaged in
all sorts of little activities,
anti-German ones, that is.
Nothing heroic
or major or anything.
But it ended up, as you can
imagine, with me in custody.
That was in 1943, and
I was imprisoned until 1945."
The coronavirus.
241 Lijnbaansgracht.
Calinte,
an "exotic dance club".
NSB Blackshirts
attacked the club in 1941,
when there was already
a ban on dancing,
but the authorities
were turning a blind eye.
In 1942, the German occupiers
banned any music that had
so-called "negroid elements".
Latin American music
was still allowed.
90 Rubensstraat.
Home of SS Hauptsturmfhrer
Ferdinand Aus der Fnten,
leader of the Zentralstelle,
the Central Office
for Jewish Emigration.
Aus der Fnten was sentenced
to death in 1950,
but Queen Juliana commuted his
sentence to life imprisonment.
Aus der Fnten was one of the
group of German war criminals
held at a prison
in the town of Breda.
They were known
as the "Breda Four",
then the "Breda Three"
and finally the "Breda Two".
The others were
German security chief
Willy Lages
who was released in 1966
and died in 1971,
deputy Commander of Amersfoort
concentration camp
Joseph Kotalla,
who died in the prison
in 1979,
and Franz Fischer, who had
deported Jews in The Hague.
Fischer and Aus der Fnten both
died shortly after being
released in 1989.
Intense public discussions
surrounded their releases.
Central Station.
Early in the morning
of the 15th of July 1942,
the first two trains
departed from Central Station
to transit camp Westerbork.
The following month,
the illegal communist newspaper
The Truth issued an appeal:
"Train drivers, consider that
each train loaded with slaves
transported by you, is
headed to the slaughterhouse!"
Dutch Railways drove around
140 so-called "Jew trains"
from Amsterdam to Westerbork.
It is estimated that
a quarter of Amsterdam's Jews
were deported via this station.
On the request of the Dutch
government in exile,
train drivers
and other personnel
did go on strike
in September 1944,
to help the Allied invasion.
The first trains
with the camp survivors
arrived in the empty station
shortly after liberation.
Rita Boas returned
from Ravensbrck via Sweden.
Later she recalled:
"I arrived at Central Station
in the evening, in the dark,
and made myself known.
I heard people say
we should be glad
we hadn't been here
in Amsterdam.
They said they'd been so hungry.
As if we'd just come in
from St Moritz."
Of the 107,000 Jews that were
deported from the Netherlands
only around 5,000 returned.
75% of Jews did not survive.
This is the highest percentage
of occupied Western Europe.
Amsterdam lost more than
60,000 of its 80,000 Jewish
inhabitants.
Regular train service resumed
on the 21st of June 1945,
to Rotterdam.
Dam Square.
In June 1940,
the German Army Commander
of the city
had a bandstand erected
in front of the Royal Palace
to stage a concert by the Music
Corps of the Order Police.
The stand stayed in place
for the remainder of the war,
and was used for performances
by German and Dutch Nazis.
The Nazi press wrote in 1941:
"Amsterdam's youth
was especially enraptured
by the punchy marches
and battle songs."
Sound check, sound check, one...
1 Dam Square.
The Bijenkorf department store.
In June 1940
members of the National
Socialist Dutch Workers Party
smashed eight of the large
shopfront windows.
Many of the Bijenkorf's staff
were Jewish,
so German soldiers were
not allowed to visit the shop.
The lunchroom on the top floor
on the other hand
was prohibited for Jews.
The Jewish owners
managed to leave the country.
In February 1941
the Germans installed Dutch
collaborators as supervisors.
They fired all Jewish staff.
When the yellow star badges
were introduced
in the spring of 1942,
resistance group The Spark
produced 300,000 paper stars
printed with the slogan "Jews
and non-Jews united in battle".
Some of the stars were thrown
from the roof of the Bijenkorf,
and fluttered down
onto the streets below.
9 Dam Square,
then 187 to 205 Warmoesstraat.
In August 1940
the Commander of the city
set up a German Army Club
at the Polmans House,
a part of Hotel Krasnapolsky.
It welcomed around 1,300 guests
on most days.
There were billiard
and table tennis tables.
Large maps on the wall
showed the progress of the war
on the frontlines.
500 to 750 members
of the German army
stayed at the hotel every month,
as they did
in other luxurious hotels
like the Amstel and L'Europe.
Over Christmas and other
holidays, the Nazi-run charity
organisation
Winter Aid
would provide meals to children.
Every Friday there was
a special screening of films
for the German Air Force.
In 1943, Amsterdam police
officers had to come here
to watch propaganda films
about the German police
in the Netherlands
and on the eastern front.
Anyone making noise
in the auditorium
could expect
a cut in his salary.
What do we want?
- Climate justice!
- When do we want it?
- Now!
- What do we want?
- Climate justice!
- When do we want it?
- Now!
Right on! Let's go!
Dam Square
was the location of many rallies
by the German Police
or the Dutch Nazi party.
If they were held elsewhere,
loudspeakers were sometimes
set up on this
and other squares in the city.
In June 1941, Reich Commissioner
Seyss-Inquarts' words
were sounded over Dam Square:
"For the 2,000-year-old history
of Europe to make sense,
Germany has to win,
and not only defeat the Soviets,
but also their puritan partners
in England
and above all the Jewish mind."
In February 1945
food distribution
reached a new low.
The Central Kitchens
could only provide a meal
of a few hundred calories
per day,
and on the illegal market, food
prices had gone through
the roof.
A loaf of bread cost 200 times
as much as it did a year
earlier.
The illegal communist party
incited women to protest.
Their newspaper wrote:
"Women, fight for our children.
Demand more food.
Don't grumble and complain
but take action!"
On the 21st of February
a group of 200 women marched to
City Hall
and demanded to see the mayor.
One of the women
said after the war:
"With this demonstration
we wanted to make it clear
that the mayor
had to assure that our children
would not die of hunger."
The mayor did visit
two Central Kitchens,
confirmed the bad
quality of the food
and promised improvements.
To no avail.
A week later,
the women marched again,
this time with their children,
but the mayor
did not receive them.
The Germans
ordered the Dutch police
to shoot at
the women and children,
stating large gatherings
were forbidden.
The police did not
follow the orders this time.
The Central Kitchens shut down
completely at the end of April.
Before liberation,
around 4,000 people in Amsterdam
had died from hunger and cold,
mostly old men
and young children.