The ‘Opgejaagd’ exhibition (hunted down) at the Kamp Westerbork Remembrance Center will be extended, because has been so well attended. Over a period of four months, more than 60,000 visitors watched and listened to the story of the persecution of the Sinti and Roma during the Second World War.
Special film excerpts, never before exhibited objects and unique images show in a personal way the long run of oppression and migration that led to the events of the Second World War. Central to the exhibition is the “Gypsy Transport”: on 19 May 1944. Around 245 Sinti and Roma were taken from camp Westerbork to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The vast majority of them were under the age of 18. Only 31 Sinti and Roma from this transport would survive the war.
The exhibition was created in collaboration with Beike Steinbach’s O Lungo Drom Foundation and consultant and anthropologist Peter Jorna, and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Various survivors and relatives from the Sinti and Roma community participated in the exhibition. Young visitors are guided through the exhibition via their own family route. For people looking for more background and science there is an interactive floor.
Located in the Province of Drenthe, Kamp Westerbork was the main ‘transit camp’ for people being removed from the Netherlands by the Nazi regime. The camp was originally set up as a reception centre for Jewish refugees, however with the fall of the Netherlands it was quickly converted into the final place most Jewish, Roma, Homosexual; Disabled or otherwise ‘undesirable people’ saw before being transported to a concentration camp. In all, 97,776 Jewish people were deported via the camp, and of these 94,643 were murdered.
National Memorial Center
After the war, the camp was again used for detainment, but this time for Moluccan refugees from recently-liberated Dutch Indonesia. On 4 May, 1970, the then-Queen of the Netherlands, Juliana, unveiled Westerbork as a National Memorial Center.
