In 2005, the first version of the monument went online. Throughout the years, the monument has been supplemented with tens of thousands of contributions, from the editors and the public. This information ensures that the men, women, and children who were murdered in ’40-’45 will not be forgotten.
Objective
The Jewish Monument has two main objectives; keeping alive the memory of Jews in the Netherlands who have been murdered or killed during the Shoah and enabling all living Jews to search for their roots.
In addition, the Jewish Monument devotes itself to providing educational material for different forms of education, the promotion of scientific research into the Jewish community in the Netherlands on the eve of the deportations, and the digitalisation and conservation of historical sources.
The Jewish Community in the Netherlands
The website contains a separate commemorative page for each victim: a dark purple page with their basic data, age at time of death, and a portrait photo if present. For nearly all victims, there is information to be found about their address and its other residents, and about close relatives. Moreover, for a large number of victims, additional information is available: short biographical notes and fragments from various sources, photos, and documents, information about post-war damage claims, inventory lists, and links to other websites that mention the person in question.
This way, the victims are placed in the context of their family and the wider Jewish community, making it painfully visible how devastating the Holocaust has truly been.
A monument in motion
The Jewish Monument is never finished. Visitors, historians, and survivors continuously supply the website with new material. During the first years (from 2005 to 2010) this happened via email, phone, or letter. These reactions were anonymized and published as contribution by a visitor of the website. Since 2010 users add information directly. Numerous contributions have been made, making the digital Jewish Monument a rich source of information about the Shoah and the pre-war Jewish community in the Netherlands. Information that is regularly used for education and research. Above all, the Jewish Monument is a place of commemoration.
You too can supply victims’ pages with text, photos, addresses, family connections, information about Stolpersteine or references to other websites.
Click here to read more about how to register to the website and which contributions you can make yourself.
Here you will find more information about the background and development of the Jewish Monument and the sources used.
