Echoes

As most of you will have guessed we are staying in Amsterdam for a few days. Today, is of course a day of remembrance for all victims of war, any war, any nationality.

I had the date very much in mind when I chose this photograph. The canal is the Nieuwe Keizersgracht and it serves as a memorial to the Jews from Amsterdam who were most cruelly murdered in the Nazi death camps. The shiny metal plaques commemorate 200 Jews, aged 1 to 80 years, who once lived along this stretch of canal and who were slaughtered in Auschwitz, Ravensbruck, Bergen-Belsen or Sobibor. Each plaque records the names of the people who were taken from the house directly across the water of the canal.

Only 21,000 of the 140,000 Dutch Jews survived the war. Of the approximately 35,000 sent to Sobibor, 19 people survived. Of the approximately 60,000 sent to Auschwitz, 500 survived. Overall, approximately three out of every four Dutch Jews were killed in the Holocaust.