Occupied City (2023)

[bunniefuu]

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 w*r

as Rudolf Bergsma.

His mother Carolina Kurk- Cohen

was m*rder*d in Auschwitz

k*lling 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 n*zi 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 att*cks.

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 w*r, 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 w*r, 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 prost*tute.

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 m*rder*d 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 w*r:

"We celebrated by walking

along Kalverstraat

with flowers in our buttonholes.

Dutch n*zi 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 n*zi 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 m*rder*d

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 ex*cuted.

Gerrit Ruys d*ed 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 w*r,

but the country was att*cked

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 n*zi party, the NSB,

got almost 30,000 votes

in the municipal elections

in Amsterdam

a year before the w*r.

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 m*llitary 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 n*zi 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 m*llitary

and civil administration.

Next to the Concertgebouw

were the headquarters of

the Dutch n*zi 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 h*tler 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 n*zi

director Hans Steinhoff

sh*t 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 w*r 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 w*r 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 n*zi 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

w*r, 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 m*llitary 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 h*tler,

Herman Gring

and Anton Mussert,

the Dutch n*zi 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

sh*t 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

sh*t himself in the head

and d*ed.

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 sh*t 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 m*rder*d.

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 att*cks

on Dutch collaborators.

Prinsen Geerligs was ex*cuted in

Sachsenhausen concentration camp

near Berlin in 1943.

Schaft was sh*t in the dunes

near Amsterdam

a few weeks

before the w*r 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 w*r

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,

d*ed 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 m*llitary intelligence

before the w*r,

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 w*r 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 w*r.

"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 w*r 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 d*ed.

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 w*r,

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

thr*at 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 ex*cuted 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 d*ed 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 w*r:

"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 w*r

in various German prisons.

In 1946, Veterman

and his wife Katy van Witsen

were k*lled 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 w*r.

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 n*zi 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 d*ed 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 m*rder*d 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 n*zi 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 b*llet

in the larynx here.

During the w*r, 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 m*rder*d in Auschwitz

in September 1942.

His wife and daughters were

m*rder*d there a year later.

Weesperstraat.

Before the w*r,

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 w*r, the city

authorities decided not to

rebuild the area.

They said there were already too

many social and

traffic-related issues

before the w*r.

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 sh**ting

at people celebrating out on

the streets

after the start

of curfew at 7pm.

A b*llet struck Sigi Mendels,

a Jewish boy who had ventured

outside for the first time

after hiding for years.

Eight months later

he d*ed 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 sh*t.

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 n*zi 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 n*zi'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 w*r.

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 w*r is done',

meaning that if the Germans

needed to melt down church bells

for metal,

their chances of winning the w*r

couldn't be good.

Hekelveld.

On the night of

the 4th of May 1945,

a patrol of

the German Order Police sh*t

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 k*lled.

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 r*fle 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 w*r.

Two of their children

were m*rder*d,

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 ex*cuted

in September 1942.

Over the course

of the occupation,

four children were sh*t 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 d*ed in March 1945,

when Germans started sh**ting

dumdum b*ll*ts 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 sh**ting.

A b*llet 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 sh*t at

him again.

Alex d*ed 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 w*r 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 sh**t 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 k*lling

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 att*ck

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 att*ck 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 att*ck

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 att*ck were ex*cuted

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 w*r,

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 d*ed in March 1945

in Vaihingen concentration camp

in Germany.

After the w*r 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 w*r, 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 w*r,

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 w*r, 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 d*ed in

1945 in Beendorf,

a subcamp of Neuengamme

concentration camp in Germany.

After the w*r, 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 n*zi 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 m*rder*d in 1943

in Sobibor.

His real name, Koen Gezang,

was only discovered in 2002.

After the w*r, 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 m*rder*d 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 n*zi organisation that looted

Jewish cultural property.

After the w*r, 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 n*zi

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 w*r

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 sh*t 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 g*ng 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 n*zi court.

On the 3rd of March 1941,

he became the first resistance

fighter in the Netherlands

to die in front

of a f*ring squad.

Alfred Kohn d*ed 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 d*ed 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 w*r,

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 w*r.

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 w*r.

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 k*ll himself

by taking poison,

but he did not succeed.

He d*ed 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 w*r 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 w*r

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 w*r, 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 n*zi'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 w*r

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 att*cks

against the occupying forces,

then they wouldn't carry out

any executions.

The KP resistance militia

weren't intending

to k*ll 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

sh*t Oelschlgel in the head.

His body remained where it lay,

in front of the tobacconist

at number 6 Beethovenstraat.

Retaliation for k*lling a German

was always greater

than for k*lling 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 sh*t 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 w*r,

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 sh**t 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 k*lled.

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 w*r, 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

sh*t policeman Hendrik Blonk and

his wife Johanna Blonk-Martens,

at their home.

They both survived the att*ck.

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 w*r, Blonk was

sentenced to eight years

in prison.

He was released in 1949.

Kalshoven and Kuiper were caught

and ex*cuted 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 m*llitary 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 n*zi 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 d*ed 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 m*rder*d in Auschwitz

in August 1943.

Following his deportation,

the local authorities

bricked up the property

to protect it from looters.

After the w*r,

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 m*rder*d 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 sh*t.

Schreuder d*ed 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 n*zi surgeon.

Later in the w*r,

the n*zi-run welfare

organisation, the NVD,

used the building

as a maternity clinic

for women who had become

pregnant by German soldiers.

After the w*r, 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 w*r

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 p*stol to k*ll 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 su1c1de 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 su1c1de

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 d*ed,

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 m*llitary 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 m*rder*d 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 w*r, 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 att*ck

on the Civil Registry.

The authorities arrested him

the month after the att*ck,

and on the 1st of July 1943

he was ex*cuted 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 w*r that

"h*m* 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 w*r, 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 att*ck

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 m*rder*d

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 m*rder*d

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 m*rder*d

in Auschwitz.

Number 45, fourth floor.

Home of Anthonie Donker,

a writer who urged

all writers and other artists

to resist joining the n*zi-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 w*r

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 m*rder*d 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 sh*t 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 w*r,

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 d*ed.

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 w*r 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. b*at 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 w*r,

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 ex*cuted in retaliation

for att*cks on Germans

by the resistance.

If that happened,

the wives of the ex*cuted 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 sh**t

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 w*r

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 b*rned,

and the portrait of h*tler

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 b*at 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 d*ed.

The Germans later ex*cuted

four of the strikers,

and imprisoned many.

They fired the mayor

and the head of police

and replaced them

with n*zi 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 sh**ting 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 ex*cuted people

at the site of an att*ck

by the resistance,

but late in the w*r

a lack of fuel and cars

sometimes made this impossible.

Approximately 140 men

were ex*cuted at Rozenoord.

The identities of a hundred men

are known.

Most were prisoners

from Weteringschans prison.

The largest group, 53 men,

were sh*t here on the 8th of

March 1945,

as a retaliation for an att*ck

on SS leader Hanns Rauter.

Executions were generally

carried out early in

the morning,

with the members of the f*ring

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 sh*t,

depriving the resistance

of their contact man."

Frans Hendrikx, the director

of the adjacent tennis park

Amstel View,

witnessed several executions.

After the w*r 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 c*ptive wrote

after the w*r:

"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 k*lled,

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 ex*cuted 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 w*r

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 sh**t

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 att*ck

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 t*rrorists

who we sh*t 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

att*ck on the Civil Registry.

Hissink and Remins were

arrested after they were

betrayed

in the summer of 1943.

Remins was ex*cuted on the 1st

of October 1943 in the dunes.

Hissink was ex*cuted in

November 1943 in Sachsenhausen.

The SD arrested Tom Koreman

after they found a p*stol

in his office.

Remins had given it to him

after the att*ck on

the registry.

Koreman was also ex*cuted.

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 d*ed of drowning.

Books on astronomy were popular

at lending libraries during

the w*r.

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 sh**ting 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 g*nsh*t wounds to

the head and chest, and d*ed.

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 d*ed 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 m*rder*d 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 m*rder*d 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 att*ck 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 k*lled

if her son betrayed them.

But Mrs Bogaard said she was

only willing to go the next day.

Despite this,

the att*ck 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 ex*cuted

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 w*r,

Bogaard was sentenced to death.

He was ex*cuted 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 m*llitary 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 d*ed in January 1944

in Auschwitz.

His mother

Veronica Viskoop-de Brave

had already been k*lled there

in November 1943.

His father Sem Viskoop

was m*rder*d in the same camp

in February 1944.

After the w*r, 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 w*r.

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 w*r,

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

k*lled him.

Several people k*lled 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 k*lling centres

in occupied Europe,

mainly Auschwitz and Sobibor.

The last time people

were deported from the facility

was in November 1943.

After the w*r 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 n*zi 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 n*zi 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 sh*t 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 sh*t down

in France.

His body was never found.

Blokland became commander

of the Prinses Irene Brigade,

a Dutch m*llitary 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 expl*sives

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 expl*sives

sink to the bottom of the canal.

When the Wehrmacht found out,

four German soldiers

guarding the bridge

were ex*cuted

for dereliction of duty.

The Germans set expl*sives

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 w*r 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

f*ring squad ex*cuted 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 w*r 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" d*ed.

The hospital was closed

in August 1943.

Demolished.

88 Vijzelstraat.

HaKo, corset

shop of Hendrik Koot.

The shop windows were decorated

with portraits of h*tler.

Koot was a member

of the NSB blackshirts

and had d*ed following clashes

in the Jewish Quarter

in February 1941.

According to the n*zi 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 w*r.

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 m*llitary 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

att*cked 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 w*r 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 d*ed in 1971,

deputy Commander of Amersfoort

concentration camp

Joseph Kotalla,

who d*ed in the prison

in 1979,

and Franz Fischer, who had

deported Jews in The Hague.

Fischer and Aus der Fnten both

d*ed 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 w*r,

and was used for performances

by German and Dutch Nazis.

The n*zi 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 w*r

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 n*zi-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 n*zi 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 w*r:

"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 sh**t 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 d*ed from hunger and cold,

mostly old men

and young children.