Dutch open Holocaust victims’ homes to public

THE HAGUE (JTA) — Dozens of houses that belonged to Dutch Jewish Holocaust victims across the Netherlands will be open to visitors on May 4, the country’s official memorial day for the victims of World War II.

The “open house” initiative commemorating deported Dutch Jews began in Amsterdam last year, when 20 such addresses opened their doors to the public.

Holocaust survivors told their stories and there were lectures on the period.

This year, the project has spread to The Hague, Borne, Elburg, Groningen and Tilburg, according to the website dedicated to the initiative.

Some 75 percent of Holland’s Jewish population was murdered in the Holocaust, according to the Dutch Jewish Historical Museum, which helped organize the event together with home owners.

Separately, two Dutch cities dedicated memorial monuments for Jewish Holocaust victims.

In Rotterdam, Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb on Tuesday unveiled a semicircle-shaped bronze statue engraved with the names of 686 Jewish children who were deported from Rotterdam between July 1942 and April 10 the following year.

The same day, an exposition on the lives of Dutch Jewish children during the Holocaust opened in the city hall of Naarden, a municipality near Amsterdam.

In Castricum, a picturesque coastal town near Amsterdam, a monument shaped like a large rock is scheduled to be unveiled next week by Mayor Toon Mans in memory of 31 Jews who lived there and were murdered.

Last month, the Dutch Railway Museum opened a permanent exposition on the Jews’ deportation. Nazis deported some 12,000 Jews from where the museum today stands, an old train station in Utrecht.