Judith Zilversmit was tossed back and forth from emotion to emotion on her visit to the new Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam. The story around ten anonymous buttons particularly touched her: ‘Connected to ten people, each with their own life, and murdered because they were Jewish.’…
The question regularly comes up these days as to why it has taken so long to get to the museum. Partly because the Jews wanted to look forward, partly because the Dutch state did not want to know much about its role. In the end, I think it may have been ‘an advantage’ that it took so long. It has now been exposed in a way that might not have been possible before: transparent, nondisguising, from a view of today. Unforgettable, whatever it must be. A warning to remain vigilant and alert.
During the museum’s opening on Sunday, humanity takes centre stage. Most moving for me: to the music of Dutch composer and Holocaust victim Dick Kattenburg, Marnix Lenselink performs a ‘tap dance’ in the Hollandsche Schouwburg, where the theatre used to be. It has something crazy, like: you don’t do that, but most of all it says: there was life there! There was music there! Don’t forget that!
I caught up with Elianne Muller and asked what she thought of the museum. “The intimate setting appealed to me,” she says. “I didn’t have the urge to run away hard, as I once did in Jerusalem. Great that it’s there in Amsterdam after all these years and definitely good for the new generation.”
From the Dutch Newspaper Het Parool.
Composers in the crosshairs of our attention