Fodor's Expert Review National Holocaust Memorial Hollandsche Schouwburg

From 1892 to 1941, this was a popular theater staging Dutch plays by luminaries such as Herman Heijermans and performed by artists like Esther de Boer-van Rijk. In 1941, 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, and turned it into a memorial where the 6,700 family names of 107,000 Dutch Jews who were deported are displayed. The very moving 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. The silent courtyard is an effective remembrance of the 80,000 souls that began their journey to the extermination camps through this theater's doors.