Camp Amersfoort National Memorial

Nationaal Monument Kamp Amersfoort

A memorial on the premises of the »Amersfoort police and transit camp« recalls the fates of the camp's inmates.

History

In 1940, following the German invasion of the Netherlands, a »police transit camp« was established on the premises of a training facility of the Dutch Army, which had originally been built in 1939. The German camp was run by the Security Police (Sipo) and Security Service (SD). In May 1941, the Security Police sealed off the area and began expanding the camp. Between August 1941 and March 1943, 8,522 prisoners passed through the camp, a majority of them political prisoners. Jews, Sinti and Roma, »asocials« and black marketeers were also among the prisoners. The camp was infamous with the Dutch population due to the atrocious conditions and widespread abuse by the guards. At the beginning, the guard detachments mainly consisted of German nationals living in the Netherlands who had been drafted for the SS. Later, Amersfoort became a training camp for members of the SS, who subsequently worked at other camps. Dutch volunteers were also trained at Amersfoort and later deployed in other camps. Between May 1943 and its liberation, the occupation authorities used the camp to incarcerate young men who were to be deported and deployed in forced labour in the »Third Reich«. Some of them were »work service objectors«: Dutch citizens who refused to be deployed in labour detachments in Germany. In this second phase, a total of 26,705 inmates was held at the camp, of which 13,243 were deported to labour detachments in Germany; 3,152 were deported to concentration camps. On April 19, 1945, the SS abandoned the camp along with its remaining 579 prisoners.

Amersfoort, undated, View of Camp Amersfoort, Archief Eemland

Amersfoort, 2010, Monument to the murdered Soviet prisoners of war, Henk Peelen

Victims

At least 35,219 people passed through Camp Amersfoort during the German occupation. 523 prisoners, possibly more, died on the camp premises – 311 of them were executed. Among the victims were also 100 Soviet prisoners of war who starved to death or were shot. Several Jews were shot by the guards for supposed escape attempts. Most of the executions were carried out on the shooting range. It is not known how many of those deported from Amersfoort perished elsewhere.

When the Germans invaded the Kingdom of the Netherlands in May 1940 there were around 120,000 Jews living in the country, 75,000 of whom were in Amsterdam. An SS-led civil administration quickly began to implement anti-Jewish measures and organised acts of violence. A »Central Office for Jewish Emigration« was established by the SS in Amsterdam by the end of March 1941. On June 22 the following year Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962), head of the department for Jewish affairs in the SS Reich Security Main Office, informed the Foreign Office in Berlin that an agreement had been concluded with the German Reich Railways (Reichsbahn), one of the provisions of which was the deportation of 40,000 Jews from the Netherlands. These Jews were firstly detained in the Westerbork transit camp, where lists of names for deportation were produced. The first trains left here for Eastern Europe in the middle of July 1942. There were repeated raids to get hold of the Jews earmarked for deportation. By September 1944 around one hundred deportation transports had left Westerbork for the Auschwitz and Sobibor extermination camps, the Theresienstadt ghetto or the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The SS deported over 100,000 people; mainly Jews but also Roma. Jews with Dutch nationality were also deported to their deaths from France and Belgium. The total number of Dutch Jews murdered between May 1940 and the end of 1944 lies at around 102,000, or 75 percent of the pre-war Jewish population of the country. Over 110,000 Jewish civilians also died during the war and occupation. There are countless monuments, museums, memorial sites, plaques and small sites of memory related to the Second World War in the Netherlands, along with research institutes and archives. The 22 metre high »Nationaal Monument op de Dam« (National Monument on Dam Square) was inaugurated in Amsterdam as early as 1947. Dedicated to all Dutch »victims of the Second World War«, the monument’s current design dates from 1956. The Anne Frank House was opened in 1960. There are national sites of memory at the former National Socialist concentration or transit camps. For example, a memorial site was established in Westerbork in 1983 comprising the historic grounds, a national monument and a modern museum. In 1987, the »Joods Historisch Museum« (Jewish Historical Museum) was inaugurated in the Great Synagogue in Amsterdam. This museum also charts the persecution and murder of the Jews. In 2021, the Durch Holocaust Memorial of Names was inaugurated in Amsterdam that lists the names of 102.000 murdered Jews and Sinti and Roma on its walls. After the war, the Dutch culture of memory was characterised above all by its emphasis on the resistance against the German occupation. From the 1980s, increasing attention was paid to the question of how the majority of the population adapted themselves to the occupation, as opposed to those who consciously collaborated. A further feature of Dutch memory is its focus on the present. This approach is especially clear in memorials to the persecuted Sinti and Roma as well as in one of the best known monuments in the world to the homosexual victims of National Socialism, located in Amsterdam.

Remembrance

After the war, a part of the camp was used as a reception centre for former prisoners and forced labourers who returned from abroad, while another part of the camp was used to intern collaborators. After 1946, the area was again used by the Dutch army. Despite many suggestions to establish a memorial at the camp, Amersfoort remained in operation. In 1967, the military left the premises and the prisoner camp was torn down; in 1969, a police academy moved into the former SS barracks.
In 1950, a wooden cross was erected on the former execution site on the shooting range. In 1953, the cross was replaced by a large sculpture depicting a »prisoner in front of a firing squad«. A memorial column was dedicated to the shot Soviet prisoners of war in 1962. A small museum was finally set up in 1974, by the director of the police academy. The local communities built a new museum building in 2000, and in 2004, an extension housing a visitor centre was added. Amersfoort has been a national memorial since 2000. However, all that remains of the original camp premises are the watchtower, a section of the outer wall and the former execution site.

Amersfoort, undated, Prisoners at Camp Amersfoort, Archief Eemland

Amersfoort, 2004, Entrance area and visitor centre, Nationaal Monument Kamp Amersfoort

Possibilities

Guided tours, publications, library

Open

March to October
Tuesday to Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday 12 p.m. to 4 p.m.
November to February
Tuesday to Friday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sunday 12 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Contact

http://www.kampamersfoort.nl

info@kampamersfoort.nl

+31 (0)33 461 31 29

Loes van Overeemlaan 19
3832 RZ Leusden / Amersfoort

Amersfoort, 2006, »Prisoner in front of a firing squad« monument, Erik de Vries

Amersfoort, 2004, Watchtower on the former camp premises, Nationaal Monument Kamp Amersfoort

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