Amsterdam (Rough Guide) - Martin Dunford [63]
Display at De Hollandsche Schouwburg
When the museum reopens, there will be several other exhibition areas devoted to the trade union movement.
The Old Jewish Quarter and Eastern docklands | The Plantagebuurt |
Verzetsmuseum
The excellent Verzetsmuseum, at Plantage Kerklaan 61 (Dutch Resistance Museum; Tues–Fri 10am–5pm; Mon, Sat & Sun 11am–5pm; €6.50; www.verzetsmuseum.org), relates the story of the German occupation of the Netherlands and the progress of the Resistance in World War II, from the invasion of May 1940 to the liberation of 1945. Thoughtfully presented, the display along the central gangway examines the main themes of the occupation, dealing honestly with the fine balance between cooperation and collaboration. On either side, smaller display areas are devoted to different aspects of the Resistance, like the coordinated transport strike towards the end of the war and more ad hoc responses, like the so-called Melkstaking (Milk Strike) in the spring of 1943, when hundreds of milk producers refused to deliver, in protest at the Germans’ threatened deportation of 300,000 former (demobilized) Dutch soldiers to labour camps in Germany. There is also a particularly interesting section on the Jews, outlining the way in which the Germans gradually isolated them, breaking their connections with the rest of the Dutch population before moving in for the kill. Interestingly, the Dutch Resistance proved especially adept at forgery, forcing the Germans to make the identity cards they issued more and more complicated – but without much success. A further sub-section focuses on the Dutch East Indies, modern-day Indonesia, where many of the inhabitants initially welcomed the Japanese when they brushed the Dutch aside during the Japanese invasion of the islands in 1942. The Indonesians soon learnt that the Japanese were not to be preferred to their old masters, but when the Dutch tried to reassert their control at the end of World War II in a shoddy and shameful colonial war, the Indonesians fought back, eventually winning independence in 1949.
Throughout the museum, a first-rate range of old photographs illustrates the (English and Dutch) text along with a host of original artefacts, from examples of illegal newsletters to signed German death warrants and, perhaps most moving of all, farewell letters thrown from the Auschwitz train. Apart from the treatment of the Jews, perhaps the most chilling feature of the occupation was the use of indiscriminate reprisals to terrify the population. Adopted in 1944, when the Dutch Resistance became a major irritant, this policy of mass reprisals cowed most of the population most of the time, though there was always a minority courageous enough to resist. Some of these brave men and women are commemorated by little metal sheets, which provide potted biographical notes – and it’s this mixture of the general and the personal that is the museum’s particular strength.
The Old Jewish Quarter and Eastern docklands |
The Oosterdok
Just to the north of the Plantagebuurt lies the Oosterdok, whose network of artificial islands was dredged out of the River IJ to increase Amsterdam’s shipping facilities in the seventeenth century. By the 1980s, this mosaic of docks, jetties and islands had become something of a post-industrial eyesore, but since then an ambitious redevelopment programme has turned things around and parts of the area are now occupied by some of the city’s most popular housing. The only obvious sights here are the Nederlands Scheepvaartmuseum (Netherlands Maritime Museum), though the interior is closed for a major refit until 2012, maybe