Monuments Now  15 September 2010

Unique, information-rich, digital, and accessible to all

Since the end of the Second World War, its events have been commemorated in a constant succession of new ways. Today, 65 years later, the Jewish Historical Museum and the Hollandsche Schouwburg are opening the gates to the future with three exceptional, innovative projects that provide digital access to the past. On 15 September these projects will be presented at the Hollandsche Schouwburg in Amsterdam.

Jewish Monument Community

A unique social network centred on the Shoah
With more than 250,000 pages of information about Jewish victims of the Shoah, the Digital Monument to the Jewish Community in the Netherlands is a treasured place of commemoration. It has now become the centre of the interactive Jewish Monument Community, a social network of the victims' family members, neighbours, and classmates, as well as researchers and students. On the website, anyone can look up or contribute facts, photographs, stories, and memories about the victims of the Shoah, building bridges between the postwar generations and their forebears. The result is a living community where the past and present meet. The Jewish Monument Community is open to everyone.

ikPod

Two monuments merge
At the Hollandsche Schouwburg there is a wall of names, with all 6,700 family names of the Jews from the Netherlands who were murdered during the German occupation. The ikPod, an iPod specially adapted by Mediamatic, links the names on the wall to all the available information about all family members on the Digital Monument website. Visitors can read the names on the wall with the ikPod to learn the individual histories behind them. Visitors to the wall of names can now see information about family situations, addresses, and occupations, supplemented with personal stories and more than 10,000 photographs and documents. This makes the monument interactive and meets the growing need for individual commemoration, in a fitting, dignified manner.

Two Thousand Witnesses Tell Their Stories

5,000 hours of life stories from the Shoah Visual History Archive, now available to visitors
With the help of 70 summarizers, the Jewish Historical Museum has made 2,000 eyewitness testimonies from the Visual History Archive of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute in Los Angeles fully searchable. This is the largest oral history archive on the Shoah in the Netherlands and can now be searched in its entirety. The complete archive, assembled on the initiative of Steven Spielberg, consists of nearly 52,000 interviews with survivors of and eyewitnesses to the Shoah from all over the world. From this archive, the Jewish Historical Museum selected 2,000 interviews related to the Netherlands. The interviews can be viewed in the Hollandsche Schouwburg and the Jewish Historical Museum. For an impression of the interviews visit the Resource Centre online.  

Program Monuments Now 15 September 2010:

14.30 uur  Doors open
15.00 uur  Words of welcome from Joël Cahen, director of the Jewish Historical Museum (JHM) and the Hollandsche Schouwburg.
15.05 uur  Speakers
       - Ed van Thijn, former mayor of Amsterdam
       - Stephen Smith, director of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute (o.v.b.).
       - Introduction to the three projects in words and images by Lonnie Stegink (head of the Resource Centre, JHM).
       - Round table with members of the Jewish Monument Community, led by the journalist Leonard Ornstein.  
       - Willem Velthoven, chairman of the non-profit organization Mediamatic, who will discuss the ikPod.
15.45 uur  Closing words by Joël Cahen.
A reception will follow, with opportunities to view the testimonies in Two Thousand Eyewitnesses Speak, try out the ikPod, and sign up for the Jewish Monument Community.
17.00 uur  End of presentation

To register for the presentation or request more information or images, please contact Annelie Spaans, Marketing & Communication Department, Jewish Historical Museum.
T +31 (0)20 5 310 372 or E Communication Department 

Hollandsche Schouwburg
Plantage Middenlaan 24
1001 RE Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Open daily from 11.00 to 16.00
www.hollandscheschouwburg.nl
You can take metro line 51 or 54 to Waterlooplein, a five-minute walk from the museum, or tram 9 or 14 to Plantage Kerklaan.

The Hollandsche Schouwburg is one of the most important Dutch monuments commemorating the persecution of the Jews. In 1942 and 1943, thousands of Jewish men, women, and children were rounded up there to be deported. More than 100,000 Dutch Jews, out of a total population of 140,000, were murdered in concentration and extermination camps.