World War 2 in Amsterdam

Before WW2, 85000 Jews lived in Amsterdam. After WW2 only 5000. The Nazis needed just 16 months for this. In summer 1942 the raids and deportations to the camps in the east started. On the 30th of September 1943 the Nazis declared Amsterdam ‘Judenrein’, ‘free of Jews’.

War Museum Amsterdam

The Nazis followed a three step plan: registration, concentration and deportation. In this tour I will show you what happened in Amsterdam. There is no place that tells the story about WW2 in Amsterdam so succinctly as the Museum of the Dutch Resistance does. Besides showing you the different steps the Nazi took in the preparation of the deportations, much attention is paid to the organization of the resistance. The Nazis used the coastal area to execute members of the resistance. An impressive Honory Cemetery can be visited in the tour Kennemerdunes.

Deportation place

Located in the heart of the old Jewish quarter, is the former theatre. During the war the Nazis made Jews assemble in this building. This was their last stop in Amsterdam and the first step in the deportation process that ended in Auswitsch or Sobibor for most of the Dutch Jews.

Also we will see the new Holocaust monument and (if open) we can visit the Portuguese synagogue, where nothing changed since 1675. The Nazis wanted to use this place as the assembly point but they preferred the theatre. Now this is part of the new Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam, opened in March 2024.

 

New Holocaust Museum

In March 2024, the Holocaust museum in Amsterdam opened its doors. It is the only Holocaust museum in the world on a site where the deportation of Jews took place.

The museum is located in a former schoolbuilding in the district where many Jewish Amsterdammers lived before the Holocaust. The school was the neighbouring building of the Jewish Nursery School, which was transformed by the Nazis  into an assembly point for Jewish children awaiting transportation.  The director of the school was a member of the Dutch resistance and through the school they managed to prevent the deportation of more than 600 Jewish children. One of these children became mayor of Amsterdam in 1983. Accross the street is the former Jewish theatre, where the Nazis locked up the adults. Now these two buildings together form the Holocaust museum.

The museum tells the visitor all about the Nazi persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands. Amsterdam needed this museum.  The Netherlands suffered the largest number as a result of the persecution of the Jews, of the countries in Western Europe occupied by the Nazis, both in terms of percentages and in absolute numbers.