Hollandsche Schouwburg (Dutch Theater)

Hollandsche Schouwburg (Dutch Theater) Review

From 1892 to 1941, this was a popular theater staging Dutch plays by luminaries such as Herman Heyermans and Esther de Boer-van Rijk and performed by artists like Louis "Little Big Man" Davids. In 1941, the Nazi occupiers made it into a Jewish-only theater, before using it as a gathering point for deportation of the city's Jews who were brought here between August 1942 and November 1943. In 1993, the Jewish Historical Museum renovated the theater, turning it into a memorial where the 6,700 family names of 104,000 Dutch Jews who were deported are displayed. Their very moving digital online memorial (www.joodsmonument.nl) features a colored dot for each person who was persecuted during the Nazi occupation and didn't survive the Shoah. There is also an exhibition on the Nazi occupation and an educational program showing documents, photographs, and videos. It is the large and silent courtyard that is perhaps the most effective remembrance of the 80,000 souls that began their journey to the extermination camps through this theater's doors.