Holocaust museum opens doors: ‘Look, think and act’
This Sunday, the National Holocaust Museum will open. High time, according to Emile Schrijver, director and associate professor of Jewish History at the UvA. “We hope visitors will reflect on the ultimate consequences of dehumanization.”
Three young Jewish faces adorn a small photograph hanging on the museum’s very last section of wall. The image was found after the war in a former hiding place. Beneath it is written, “Do not forget us.” This final piece delivers exactly the message that director and professor Emile Schrijver wants to convey to visitors. “People cannot walk away from this place indifferent.” The establishment of this museum marks the Holocaust in our history. And shouts to visitors, “Look, think, and do something about it!” In the central hall of the new museum, large letters display a quote from the Talmud that is close to Schrijver's heart: “Beholding leads to consciousness, and consciousness leads to action.”
Special Professor Schrijver has been working on the emotionally fraught job of director of a Holocaust museum in formation since 2015. “I’m already giving away my entire inaugural speech, but I experience this job as ‘a humbling honor.’”
The history of Schrijver, himself a Jew, is even woven into the museum. In a bright glass display case is a handwritten letter from his grandfather. “My grandfather was in a Japanese internment camp (in what was then the Dutch East Indies, ed.) and sent a letter to my great-grandmother after the war. He said he hoped they hadn't treated the women and children in Holland too badly in the end.” After the war, Schrijver’s grandfather received the letter back. His mother had already been killed in 1942.
Dehumanizing
Despite his intense job, Schrijver tries to be his cheerful self at home. “In the evening, I put on jazz music and write thrillers. You also have to maintain a business distance from your work.” Besides, according to the director, the museum also gives hope for improvement. “We show the slow dehumanization precisely because we hope that people will recognize the different stages of it in the future.”
Throughout the museum, for example, the walls are papered with thousands of ordinances that slowly curtailed the rights of Jews, with the cooperation of the Dutch government. And in the upper room hang beautiful dresses with meticulously produced Jewish stars on them, which Jewish owners were required to purchase themselves for 40 cents.
Dehumanization remains a current topic, Schrijver argues. “In a war, such as the one in Israel-Palestine, one becomes blind to the suffering of the other. Israelis are traumatized by the events of October 7th, but that does not mean that what is happening to the Palestinians now is not terrible. Therefore, as a country with emotional distance from those wars, I think the Netherlands should remain a place for debate. It is here that we can more easily continue to see the suffering of both sides.”
In doing so, the museum also shows that even oppressed people can act according to their moral conscience. Both non-Jewish and Jewish people continued to offer resistance during the war, says the associate professor. For example, there is an authentic Saint Nicholas suit of a Jewish resistance fighter with secret compartments for illegal documents.
Student Resistance
Another symbol of resistance is the site of the Holocaust Museum itself, Schrijver explains. The former Hollandse Kweekschool, which houses the museum, bordered a yard of the Jewish kindergarten across from the Hollandse Schouwburg, the place where Jews were assembled for transport to concentration camps. The Germans temporarily housed some of the children from the overcrowded Schouwburg in the kindergarten. Over time, nannies secretly handed over the children to director Johan van der Hulst of the Hollandse Kweekschool, thus saving the lives of many Jewish children.
Let van Dijk, Mieke Mees, and many other (UvA) students then took the babies from the nursery school, passing them off as their own children, and transported them across the country to safe houses. “One of the most special places in the museum is the wall of boxes containing 160,000 ID cards of Jewish people, compiled by the Jewish Council,” Schrijver believes. Walter Süskind and Felix Haverstad, both Jews, worked at the Hollandse Schouwburg and managed to remove about 600 ID cards from them. Thus practically the only children who survived the war were rescued from this building by the student network with Jewish help.
“Humanizers”
Schrijver wants the museum to tell personal stories. “We don't want to be a dark museum with masses of shoes of murdered Jews.” The Holocaust Museum is strikingly white and light inside. “That’s what’s unique about our museum. The Holocaust happened in broad daylight, right here, in the middle of the city.
An alliance of mosques K7 yesterday asked the king not to receive President Herzog of Israel at the opening of the museum. K7 called his presence “a huge blow to anyone who cares about the fate of the Palestinian people and values justice.” The State Information Service informs that despite the call, the king will attend the opening because the museum is “of great significance and national importance.”
“We felt that visitors should feel that, too.” Personal items therefore fill the halls. An old-fashioned foosball table, a beautiful clarinet, a child's blouse, they all tell the stories of those who were slowly ‘dehumanized.’”
“The museum is meant for ‘the learning visitor.’” Not only does Schrijver thereby invite high school students or his own students to form their opinions, but also ‘for example, police officers or railroad personnel.’”
The corridor explaining the perpetrators, mainly Nazi protagonists, is darker and “literally oppressive,” according to Schrijver. Their everyday lives are in the foreground to reflect the banality of evil. Merrily fishing or spending time happily with their young families, war criminals pose for the camera while visitors see themselves in a mirror.
Awareness
The museum is at the tail end of a number of important commemoration initiatives (including the Names Monument). “The generation of survivors is almost no longer alive. Besides, the current era calls for this museum. We need to do this, especially now,” Schrijver stressed.
The museum is therefore an important monument for the Jewish-Dutch community, the director observes. “For decades, the Dutch, and also Jewish Dutch themselves, pushed away the memory of the Holocaust. Jewish survivors who come here find it very special that they can now talk about it.”
Younger visitors are especially overwhelmed. “What your opinion of the events in that is beyond that, we won’t be able to guide. We just want everyone to realise what happened.”
King Willem Alexander will open the Holocaust Museum on Sunday, March 10th. Prime Minister Rutte, Israeli President Herzog, German Federal Council President Schwezig, and Austrian Federal President Van der Bellen will also be present this Sunday. The museum can be visited starting Monday, March 11th.
