Nationaal Monument Kamp Amersfoort

Kamp Amersfoort (Camp Amersfoort) started off as a Dutch military barrack camp named Barakkenkamp Appelweg (Barrack Camp Appel road) and initially consisted of six barracks in a square formation. In 1939, the camp started to house Dutch soldiers that were mobilized to protect the Grebbelinie (Grebbe Line), a forward defense line of the Hollandsche Waterlinie (Dutch Water Line). During this period it started to be known as de Boskamp (Forest Camp), due to the forest that surrounded it. After the Dutch surrender, the Nazis took over the camp and expanded it.

The National Monument Camp Amersfoort holds a number of annual remembrances. National ones such as on the 4th of May, which is the Dutch remembrance day, but also remembrances more directly linked to the camp. On the 19th of April the camp, for example, holds a remembrance dedicated to the moment the camp was transferred to the Red Cross, on the 9th of May there is a remembrance dedicated to the memory of the Soviet Soldiers that were murdered in the camp, and on the 11th of October there is a remembrance walk from the camp to the central station of Amersfoort, which was the route walked by prisoners when placed on transport for deportation.

Foundation National Monument Camp Amersfoort furthermore provides teaching materials to both primary and high schools. These materials focus both on broader themes of forgetting, remembering, and learning, and more specific programs focused on the camp. They can furthermore be connected to visits to the camp and to meetings with eyewitnesses. Other projects directed at younger demographics are for example Kinderen van Toen (Children of that time), which focusses on both the knowledge that was available to children living in Amersfoort about the camp and on the experiences of  imprisoned children, and the project Historische Verhalen, Vrijheid is…(Historical Stories, Freedom is….), which encourages children to reflect on the meaning of freedom through poetry. The Foundation also publishes a magazine, InBeeld, named after an older demographic.

On the grounds of the terrain there are furthermore a few different monument. The ‘Rozentuin’ (‘rose garden’) is a memorial space located on the spot where prisoners used to be inspected and counted. Pillars in the memorial place have both roses and barbed wire surrounding them. During the time of the camp the space was surrounded by barbed wire, which the prisoners ironically termed the rose garden because the ends of the barbed wire resembled the budding of roses. Other monuments include ‘De Stenen Man’ (The Stone Man), officially named prisoner standing before firing squad, which stands at the end of 320 meter long firing range, which was dug out by the prisoners themselves. The Stone Man has one hand clenched in a sign of resistance and was made by Frits Sieger, who himself was a prisoner of war. Similarly, De Steen van Jacques Kopinsky (The Stone of Jacques Kopinsky), is a monument made by Jacques Kopinsky who himself was imprisoned in Camp Amersfoort. The monument shows a stone with a crack in it, representing the mental problems many prisoners suffered during and after the war due to their time in camps such as Amersfoort. Other monuments include the Sinai monument meant to represent both hope and light, as well as the devastation of the Holocaust, and the monument Koedriest dedicated to the Soviet prisoners that died in Camp Amersfoort.

Source: EUROM.