Following a visit to the Westerbork deportation camp in Drenthe, students from the honours programme at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences created “Stories of Hope”, an exhibit inspired by the everyday heroics of men and women during the Holocaust.
Translation by Thomas Ansell
The exhibition, titled “Stories of Hope”, is on at Academie Minerva on Thursday, 14 March and Friday, 15 March.
The Groninger Internet Courant reports that participating Hanze students who are part of the Hanze Honours Kick Off programme, where they learn about various topics beyond their usual curriculum. The programme led them to visit Camp Westerbork in Drenthe, one of the main transit camps set up by the Nazi regime in the Netherlands, which inspired the exhibition.
Participating artists then chose from a number of stories about resistance and solidarity to learn more about and ultimately produced a piece inspired by what they found. The exhibition uses art as a medium to delve into this history and highlight stories of the “every day heroes” of the Holocaust.
On Thursday evening, a series of speakers will unveil the event, including Monica van Rijn, a visual artist whose parents survived Auschwitz. Van Rijn’s art deals mainly with hope, and her new project “Coloured by War” is a visual monument to the post-war generation.
Other speakers on Thursday evening include Geert Volders, the manager of the Folkingestraat Synagogue Foundation, and Stefan van der Poel, a University of Groningen history professor whose research focuses on political and cultural history in central and eastern Europe.
The exhibition is open from 5 p.m. with the first speaker beginning at 6:30 at tAcademie Minerva. On Friday, the exhibition is open from 12:00 noon to 4:30 p.m.
| What was life like for Jewish families living in Groningen, Drenthe and Friesland before, during and after World War II? The Northern Times is currently working on an in-depth article about the stories of the Jewish community of the north, including an interview with professor Van der Poel. The story will be coming out later this spring. |
Correction: According to the organisers of the exhibition, Monica van Rijn’s parents survived their time at Auschwitz. The story has not been corrected.
