Deportation centre
The story of the Hollandsche Schouwburg
as a deportation centre is both unique and typical of the
anti-Jewish Nazi policy in the Netherlands and Europe as a whole.
The individual memories that thousands of victims have about their
captivity in the theatre, the cynicism of transforming a place of
entertainment into a scene of calamity, the rescue operations both
from the theatre and the nursery, all these and other factors have
given the Hollandsche Schouwburg its unique place in the story of
the persecution of Dutch Jews. But besides this theatre in
Amsterdam, there were other locations in the Netherlands and in
Europe, which the Nazis turned into centres where Jews were
imprisoned before being deported. Thus the Hollandsche Schouwburg
serves as a typical example of anti-Jewish policy.
