Camp Westerbork has been a contested place in the Dutch remembrance culture since the liberation in 1945. Whether it concerns the creation of the National Monument on the former camp site in the fifties and sixties, the exhibition about the Westerbork Internment Camp in 2008, or the sale of sandwiches and soft drinks in the Herinneringscentrum in the nineties; there have always been strongly opposing opinions and feelings about the past and present of Camp Westerbork.

It is this dynamic of the memory of Camp Westerbork that is central to the theme year “Camp Westerbork Remembered”. Through a large public exhibition and an interdisciplinary international project on perpetrator heritage (in collaboration with the Gedenkstätte Bergen-Belsen and the Falstadsenteret, two former Nazi concentration camps in Germany and Norway) the contemporary visitor to Camp Westerbork from July 2022 to November 2023 will be given insight into the many “thruths” that have been expresssed about Camp Westerbork over the past 76 years. Who was and is moral owner of this “guilty landscape” with its “unfinished” and “unprocessed” past?

Guideline within the theme year “Camp Westerbork Remembered” is the theoretical framework developed by the German cultural scientist Aleida Assmann. Within a collective remembrance culture she distinguishes four dimensions of memory: the “individual memory” (1), distorted over time by outside influences; the “social memory” (2), passed on within families or social communities; the “cultural memory” (3), formed by, for example, films, exhibitions, monuments and websites; and finally the "political memory" (4), the message imposed by a government or other authorities that the shaped memory of the past should convey.

Within the various public activities of “Camp Westerbork Remembered” the visitor is actively and passively shown how these four forms of memory – sometimes streamlined, more often abrasive and always complex – have played a role in the creation of the “lieux de memoire” that Camp Westerbork has become today.

A first important pillar of the theme year is a large public exhibition that will be on view from 8 July 2022 to 12 November 2023 in the museum of the Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork. This public exhibition has two separate but connected spaces and will be arranged according to the IPOP method developed by the renowned Smithsonian Institution on the basis of large-scale public research. Within this method, displaying authentic objects, personal testimonies, thematic (visual) language, interactive elements and recognizability for visitors plays an (equally) important role.

In the first space of the exhibition, the history of the memory of Camp Westerbork is placed in the context of the local, national and European memory of the Second World War on the basis of four time frames. By zooming in chronologically and interdisciplinary on literature, films, television, visual arts and monuments, poetry, historiography, theatre, the state of psychological aid, Holocaust education, the role of politics and commemorative rituals and rhetoric, the visitor is offered an insight into how the Dutch and European perspective on war has changed over the past 76 years. The place of Camp Westerbork in both scientific and popular historical culture forms the common thread.

The second space of the large public exhibition will consist of various interpretations chosen (and/or made) by eight guest curators, which will reflect both their own view of the past and present of Camp Westerbork, as well as different perspectives presented in the first part of the exhibition. The guest curators involved all have a personal connection with the history of the camp: they belong to one of the former “resident groups” on whom the history of the camp has had an impact, come from the vicinity of Westerbork, have “worked” with the subject as a scientist, and/or are representative of the contemporary (young) visitor to the Herinneringscentrum.

During the duration of the exhibition, each of the guest curators involved will have the opportunity to share his, her or, in the case of an artist collective, their own “truth” about Camp Westerbork through historical objects, visual art, audiovisual fragments and installations, musical representation and/or other (artistic) interpretations to the public. This offers the visitor an interdisciplinary, inclusive, multi-perspective and current view of the four dimensions of the memory of the past distinguished by Aleida Assmann.

This part of the exhibition will be realized in collaboration with renowned guest curators from home and abroad: Jewish survivors Rozette Kats and Betty Schols, scholar and director of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies Martijn Eickhoff in collaboration with his students of the Groningen Institute of Archaeology, the regional based art collective Drents Portret, Prof. dr. Rob van der Laarse and international heritage students from the University of Amsterdam, prize winning (local) photographer Sake Elzinga, an (artistic) collective of Sinti and Roma, renowned actor, artist and Jewish “second generation victim” Jeroen Krabbé, and English artist and art director of the University of Staffordshire, Michael Branthwaite, who has previously held exhibitions in both Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen.

During the second guest curatorship, from 14 September – 6 November 2022, the stories “hidden under the ground of the camp” are central. Martijn Eickhoff, professor by special appointment at the Groningen Institute for Archeology (GIA) and from the summer of 2021 director of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, will together with archeology students from the University of Groningen show the multi-layered history of Westerbork from an “archaeological perspective”.

Within the guest curatorship, Martijn Eickhoff, in close collaboration with the Herinneringscentrum, will set up up a series of lectures in which various multi-perspective questions are transnationally addressed - and answered by the students - which are subsequently reflected in the exhibition in an interdisciplinary manner. 

*What do the archaeological findings found in Westerbork tell us about the stratification of the site? 

*What do visitors' reactions to these findings show us about “our own perspective” on Westerbork and the war in general? 

*And what is the added value of this relatively new method for learning more about camps like Westerbork? How can this scientific perspective be transferred to visitors of former concentration camps in a museum?

The material studied and exhibited during the guest curatorship is based on a number of archaeological studies carried out in the last decade in Camp Westerbork and elswhere in Europe. 

Who is the audience that is being tried to reach with the theme year?

Major public exhibitions are viewed in Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork by more than 150,000 visitors each year. The former camp site is visited by approximately 250,000 people every year.

The backgrounds of these visitors are diverse: in the spring many young people and children visit the Herinneringscentrum in groups, in the summer months and school holidays families on holiday in the region as tourists, and in the autumn and winter “targeted visitors with an excessive interest in the history of the Holocaust”. In addition, the Herinneringscentrum is visited by people from the various “remembrance communities”: Jewish, Sinti and Roma survivors and (their) relatives, children of “wrong” parents, Indies Dutch and former Moluccan residents and their relatives.

The social media channels of the Herinneringscentrum are among the most important platforms on which “Camp Westerbork Remembered” will be communicated online. For example, messages on social media, which in 2020 had a combined monthly reach of approximately 12,500 people (Facebook 7,000 – 7,500, Twitter 2,000 – 2,500, Instagram 2,000, LinkedIn 1,000), will regularly refer to events from the history of the memory of Camp Westerbork that took place on the day of placement (exactly) so many years ago.

During the duration of the public exhibition, a number of guest curators will also be given the opportunity to “take over” the social media channels of the Herinneringscentrum for a short time (partly to participate), a so-called Social Media Takeover. In addition to the regular followers of the Herinneringscentrum , such a Takeover also directs the online followers of the guest curators in the story of theme year.

Finally, at the historic site of Camp Westerbork and in the Herinneringscentrum, visitors are informed about the memory of Camp Westerbork, then and now, through lectures, themed tours, historical walks, literary stages, film screenings and theater performances.

In January 2019, the Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork (Remembrance Centre Camp Westerbork) and Stichting Vluchteling (Refugee Foundation) issued a joint press release in the Netherlands announcing a special stage of “The Night of the Refugee”, an annual sponsored run in which money and attention is raised (for Stichting Vluchteling) for emergency aid to people who are fleeing war, conflict and oppression worldwide. Exactly eighty years after the establishment of the Central Refugee Camp Westerbork, one of the stages of “The Night of the Refugee” would start at the Herinneringscentrum.

Almost immediately after the announcement of the one-off stage, there was a great deal of commotion on social media. The choice of Camp Westerbork as the starting point of “The Night of the Refugee” was an “outrageous” and “ridiculous attempt to equate criticism of migration with the Holocaust”, according to a number of opinion makers mainly on the right side of the political spectrum and dozens of Jewish relatives who feel connected to the historic site of Camp Westerbork through their family history. Such an initiative, these opponents argued, would “tarnish” and "desecrate" the memory of the deportation and murder of more than 100,000 Jews, Sinti and Roma. A fierce dispute followed, in which it was eventually decided by the organizers to cancel the stage in its entirety.

The debate around “The Night of the Refugee” was not the first intense dispute regarding the shaped memory of Camp Westerbork. Westerbork has in fact been a contested place in the Dutch remembrance culture since the liberation in 1945. Whether it concerns the creation of the National Monument on the former camp site in the fifties and sixties, the exhibition about the Westerbork Internment Camp in 2008, or the sale of sandwiches and soft drinks in the Herinneringscentrum in the nineties; there have always been strongly opposing opinions and feelings about the past and present of Camp Westerbork.

Opinions and feelings that have changed over the years. In response to the cancellation of “The Night of the Refugee”, Tineke Ceelen, director of Stichting Vluchteling, pointed out the long-term relationship between the Herinneringscentrum and her own organisation. For years, both institutions had jointly made connections between the present and the past during activities in the Herinneringscentrum without significant criticism. Why was this “suddenly” no longer possible in 2019?

Camp Westerbork Remembered

It is this dynamic of the memory of Camp Westerbork that is central to the theme year “Camp Westerbork Remembered”. Through a large public exhibition and an interdisciplinary international project on perpetrator heritage (in collaboration with the Gedenkstätte Bergen-Belsen and the Falstadsenteret, two former Nazi concentration camps in Germany and Norway) the contemporary visitor to Camp Westerbork from July 2022 to November 2023 will be given insight into the many “thruths” that have been expresssed about Camp Westerbork over the past 76 years. Who was and is moral owner of this “guilty landscape” with its “unfinished” and “unprocessed” past? How has the identity of Westerbork changed since the construction of the Central Refugee Camp in 1939? And how do the various visitors view camp Westerbork these days? Is it primarily a “symbolic cemetery”, a “physical reminder of a forced departure from a distant home”, a “tourist attraction” or an “archaeological heritage site”?

Guideline within the theme year “Camp Westerbork Remembered” is the theoretical framework developed by the German cultural scientist Aleida Assmann. Within a collective remembrance culture she distinguishes four dimensions of memory: the “individual memory” (1), distorted over time by outside influences; the “social memory” (2), passed on within families or social communities; the “cultural memory” (3), formed by, for example, films, exhibitions, monuments and websites; and finally the "political memory" (4), the message imposed by a government or other authorities that the shaped memory of the past should convey.

Within the various public activities of “Camp Westerbork Remembered” the visitor is actively and passively shown how these four forms of memory – sometimes streamlined, more often abrasive and always complex – have played a role in the creation of the “lieux de memoire” that Camp Westerbork has become today. With this, the Herinneringscentrum wants to hold up a mirror to visitors and show that history is not black and white or stereotypical, but often more difficult and nuanced than many think. That the view of the past and present is strongly influenced by “one's own spiritual and emotional baggage”: the time in which we live, the upbringing we had or our family history. And (with this and at the same time) show what current role places like Westerbork in our contemporary society – characterized by a worldwide growing polarization, discrimination, antisemitism and antigypsiysm – still (can) play.

The history of the memory of Camp Westerbork

A first important pillar of the theme year is a large public exhibition that will be on view from 8 July 2022 to 12 November 2023 in the museum of the Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork. This public exhibition has two separate but connected spaces and will be arranged according to the IPOP method developed by the renowned Smithsonian Institution on the basis of large-scale public research. Within this method, displaying authentic objects, personal testimonies, thematic (visual) language, interactive elements and recognizability for visitors plays an (equally) important role.

In the first space of the exhibition, the history of the memory of Camp Westerbork is placed in the context of the local, national and European memory of the Second World War on the basis of four time frames. By zooming in chronologically and interdisciplinary on literature, films, television, visual arts and monuments, poetry, historiography, theatre, the state of psychological aid, Holocaust education, the role of politics and commemorative rituals and rhetoric, the visitor is offered an insight into how the Dutch and European perspective on war has changed over the past 76 years. The place of Camp Westerbork in both scientific and popular historical culture forms the common thread.

The years of the 'resistance myth' (1945 - 1965)

The first time frame covers the years 1945 - 1965. On the basis of, among other things, historical and reflective texts, rarely shown audiovisual fragments and (new) visual art about and from the Woonoord Schattenberg, special objects such as the memorial window that was donated to the municipality of Westerbork in the late 1940s (the first monument referring to Camp Westerbork) and a serious game, compiled in collaboration with the Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen, about the moral dimension of the lawsuits conducted against high-ranking Nazis as former camp commander Gemmeker (and the role of the “zeitgeist” in these trials), the story of the first twenty years after the liberation is told, a period in which “the heroic battle fought by the Dutch people during the war years” was leading in the national (public) memory of the Second World War.

Little attention was paid to the persecution of the Jews, Sinti and Roma in these years in which “the resistance myth” was central. There was also often silence within the communities themselves. If the war was already discussed within Jewish, Sinti or Roma families, it was done in veiled terms: “taken away” meant deported and “not coming back” meant murdered. Little or no criticism was made (publicly) about the “re-use”of Camp Westerbork as successively internment camp for Dutch nationals suspected of collaboration, soldiers in training, Indies Dutch and Moluccan soldiers and their families. Not nationally, but also not regionally and locally by “neighbours” of Camp Westerbork.

The new moral benchmark (1965 – 1985)

In the second time frame early editions of the diaries of Philip Mechanicus and Etty Hillesum, “processing art” by survivors, objects from the first exhibition of the Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork from 1983, special (audio-)visual language of the protests against the release of “The Three of Breda” and the trial against Eichmann, bear witness to the changing perspective that characterized this period.

From the mid-1960s, the focus of war remembrance shifted more and more to the Holocaust. Fueled by, among other things, the lawsuit against one of the architects of the persecution of the Jews, Adolf Eichmann, the television series “The Occupation” by Loe de Jong, which was watched by millions of audiences, the publication of the monumental book “Ondergang” by Jacques Presser, and the commotion surrounding the possible release of the last three German war criminals in Dutch custody – “The Three of Breda” – Auschwitz began to function as the “new moral benchmark”. The result was a growing attention for Jewish persecution victims. In addition, the camp was rediscovered when it more or less disappeared: not only was a National Monument placed in the former Westerbork Camp, but also the Herinneringscentrum was established in 1983.

In the politically polarized 1970s, more and more voices arose in favor of assigning a contemporary meaning to the shaped memory of the Second World War. The story of the war should not only be told about the period 1940-1945, but also lead to reflection on contemporary problems. It fueled the rise of educational initiatives that took the Holocaust as a warning. By drawing moral lessons from the occupation years, universal norms and values ​​could be transferred to young people.

Present and past brought together (1985 – 2010)

In the third time frame, by showing, among other things, a mini-documentary made in collaboration with the ARQ National Psychotrauma Center, newspaper articles and cartoons that represent the “zeitgeist” of these years and special objects that tell about the further “musealization” of the Holocaust such as authentic parts of recovered barracks, the “widening of the Holocaust” so characteristic of this period (1985 - 2010) will be depicted.

In the period 1985 - 2010, the (national) government increasingly focused on making a link between the present and the past. In addition, during these years the group of “accepted victims” was expanded: Sinti and Roma, people from the LGBTQ+ community and, for example, prisoners of the 'Jappen camps' in the Dutch East Indies were also recognized as “victims of the war”. This also increasingly applied to children of 'wrong' parents. Until the 1980s, the “right-wrong” paradigm had been the guiding principle in the historiography of the war. In the 1990s, this was increasingly abandoned, also within popular historical culture.

Like many other former Nazi concentration camps, Westerbork Camp was further “monumentalized” and “museumized” in these years. Within this “restored memory”, great importance was attached to telling the personal story – via audiovisual presentations in exhibitions, but also by organizing guest lectures at schools. In addition, the other settlement histories of Westerbork – the Internment Camp, the Military Camp and (Woonoord) Schattenberg – also received more and more attention (and therefore partly recognition) during this period.

Uniqueness of the Holocaust (2010 – 2022)

In the last time frame, various infographics will show examples of “art and kitsch'” with regard to the telling the story of the Second World War, a virtual reconstruction of the commander's house of Camp Westerbork (made in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam and the Pompeu Fabra University Barcelona) and findings from archaeological research that has been carried out on the former camp site since 2010, the developments in the last decade are shown. In this section, the visitor is also offered a reflection on the meaning of Camp Westerbork in 2022/2023 via a Social Media Wall, whereby an explicit relationship is established with current topics in which Westerbork "plays a role".

In the period 2010 - now, a counter-movement has started that argues that the contradictions from the war years should not be relativized to a gray mass - this would do injustice to these contradictions - and that clear moral judgments should be pronounced. According to this group of survivors, historians and opinion makers, there is a leveling-out of the Holocaust that too easily ignores not only the victims, but also the "perpetrators" and the “heroes”, who persecuted and exterminated the Jews, Sinti and Roma, respectively tried to stop the Holocaust.

The linking of the past and present, as we saw in the dispute around “The Night of the Refugee”, is also criticized by (part of) this group: they speak of the “uniqueness of the Holocaust” and disprove of any comparison with other past or present (historical) events. 

At the same time, attention for former Nazi concentration camps has increased exponentially during this period. Remembrance centers such as in Westerbork are increasingly compelled – partly due to the gradual further extinction of the first generation of eyewitnesses and the reduced (personal) knowledge of a new group of tourist visitors – to (also) other ways of telling the story of the World War II: experiments were conducted in this period with forms of “re-experiencing”, digitization and, for example, “community archeology”, continuously balancing between what is experienced as ethically responsible by the various memory communities involved and what is not.

Guest curators

The second space of the large public exhibition will consist of various interpretations chosen (and/or made) by eight guest curators, which will reflect both their own view of the past and present of Camp Westerbork, as well as different perspectives presented in the first part of the exhibition. The guest curators involved all have a personal connection with the history of the camp: they belong to one of the former “resident groups” on whom the history of the camp has had an impact, come from the vicinity of Westerbork, have “worked” with the subject as a scientist, and/or are representative of the contemporary (young) visitor to the Herinneringscentrum.

With the concept of the guest curator, the Herinneringscentrum harks back to previous exhibitions that have been made on this theme. Figuratively: in 1946 the first major retrospective exhibition on the war years opened in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam under the name “Resilient Democracy”. The core of the exhibition was formed by the creations of a dozen artists who were asked to express their vision of the occupation.

And also literally: in the design in this part of the exhibition a clear relationship will be established with previous exhibitions about the war, such as the first exhibition of the Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork from 1983 and the (original) exhibition of the Overloon War Museum, in the 50s and 60s the leading museum about the Second World War in the Netherlands.

During the duration of the exhibition, each of the guest curators involved will have the opportunity to share his, her or, in the case of an artist collective, their own “truth” about Camp Westerbork through historical objects, visual art, audiovisual fragments and installations, musical representation and/or other (artistic) interpretations to the public. This offers the visitor an interdisciplinary, inclusive, multi-perspective and current view of the four dimensions of the memory of the past distinguished by Aleida Assmann.

The central questions presented to the guest curators prior to their assignment refer to a famous statement by sociologist Theodor W. Adorno. Is interpretation of and after the Holocaust still possible at all? To what extent and in what form are you allowed to express the contested history of a former Nazi concentration camp like Westerbork? And is camp Westerbork only about the then or also about the now?

This part of the exhibition will be realized in collaboration with renowned guest curators from home and abroad: Jewish survivors Rozette Kats and Betty Schols, scholar and director of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies Martijn Eickhoff in collaboration with his students of the Groningen Institute of Archaeology, the regional based art collective Drents Portret, Prof. dr. Rob van der Laarse and international heritage students from the University of Amsterdam, prize winning (local) photographer Sake Elzinga, an (artistic) collective of Sinti and Roma, renowned actor, artist and Jewish “second generation victim” Jeroen Krabbé, and English artist and art director of the University of Staffordshire, Michael Branthwaite, who has previously held exhibitions in both Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen.

Martijn Eickhoff and the GIA 

During the second guest curatorship, from 14 September – 6 November 2022, the stories “hidden under the ground of the camp” are central. Martijn Eickhoff, professor by special appointment at the Groningen Institute for Archeology (GIA) and from the summer of 2021 director of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, will together with archeology students from the University of Groningen show the multi-layered history of Westerbork from an “archaeological perspective”.

Martijn Eickhoff (1967) is director of NIOD and endowed professor of Archaeology and Heritage of War and Mass Violence at the University of Groningen. He researches the history, cultural dimensions and after-effects of large-scale violence and regime change in Europe and Asia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a particular emphasis on the spatial, material and transnational aspects. He is currently co-coordinator of the Regional Studies sub-project within the Independence, Decolonization, Violence and War in Indonesia, 1945-1950 program.

Eickhoff has been working at NIOD since 2006 and was also affiliated with Radboud University Nijmegen as Assistant Professor of Cultural History from 2006 to 2015. He studied New and Theoretical History at the UvA (1986-1992), Ur- und Frühgeschichte at the Freie Universität in Berlin (1993) and obtained his doctorate at the UvA (2003) with research on Dutch pre- and protohistorical archaeology and the confrontation with National Socialism. In 2005-2006 he was “Gastforscher” at the Historical Institute of the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena. In 2007, Eickhoff presented a report on the Dutch Nobel laureate P. J. W. Debye and his career in Nazi Germany. A recent research topic of Eickhoff was the 'memory landscapes' of mass anti-Communist violence in Indonesia in the period 1965-68. He has also published, often in collaboration with Marieke Bloembergen, on the relationship between archaeology, politics, colonialism, heritage and violence in Asia and Europe.

The Groningen Institute of Archaeology GIA engages in fundamental archaeological research in Northwest Europe, the Mediterranean and the Polar Regions. GIA stimulates and integrates fundamental research on past human societies and their environments, from Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers to complex urban societies. The Institute facilitates research and fieldwork through its laboratories, drawing facilities, documentation, GIS, and technical support.

Questions adressed

Within the guest curatorship, Martijn Eickhoff, in close collaboration with the Herinneringscentrum, will set up up a series of lectures in which various multi-perspective questions are transnationally addressed - and answered by the students - which are subsequently reflected in the exhibition in an interdisciplinary manner. 

*What do the archaeological findings found in Westerbork tell us about the stratification of the site? 

*What do visitors' reactions to these findings show us about “our own perspective” on Westerbork and the war in general? 

*And what is the added value of this relatively new method for learning more about camps like Westerbork? How can this scientific perspective be transferred to visitors of former concentration camps in a museum?

The material studied and exhibited during the guest curatorship is based on a number of archaeological studies carried out in the last decade.

*In December 2011, extensive archaeological research was carried out in camp Westerbork. The investigation focused on two locations: in and around the camp commander's villa at the entrance to the former camp site, and at the garbage dump north of the camp site. The reason for the investigation was the refurbishment work to achieve better recognition and marking of the camp site.

Several smaller excavation pits were constructed around the villa, where SS commander Albert Gemmeker lived from 1942 to 1945, to map out traces and remains of the layout of the garden. Building biographical research was carried out in the house itself, whereby traces of use of the various residents were systematically inventoried. It turned out to be precisely in crawl spaces, cracks and holes that material was foundthat sheds light on the life story of the residents of the building in a special way.

In addition, in 2011, the camp's landfill site was mapped using height measurements and soil drilling, after which some small test pits were dug and a small part of the landfill material was recovered. In total, almost 20,000 (!) findings were made during the research, which have scientific, emotional and symbolic value. How the found spoons, medicine bottles, crockery, nails, coins, marbles, shoes, etc. can express a complicated story in a simple way, became staggeringly clear.

Some of the findings were identified in the Herinneringscentrum with a form of “community archaeology”, between and with the public. The impact of this turned out to be enormous.

*The same “community archaeology” took place in 2017. In that year, within the framework of the international collaborative project iC-ACCESS, non-invasive archaeological research was carried out at both the Heidelager - the accommodation of the guards of Camp Westerbork - and the execution site of Westerbork (where approximately 50 resistance fighters were executed during the war). Both studies were led by the University of Staffordshire.

Within iC-ACCESS, a group of European universities such as the University of Amsterdam, the Freie Universitat Berlin and the University of Staffordshire worked together with Remembrance Centers such as Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen to find new ways in telling the story of the Second World War. 

In order to understand the complex memorial cultures attached to such Nazi camp sites, the iC-ACCESS consortium approached (un)official historical interpretations which operate in relation to them and their connections to memorial paradigms and public usages of history, their particular archaeology, fluctuations in the display of memorials, framings of material traces and divergent negotiations of communities of experience. At the same time, the project took on the transnational and historically entangled approach to campscapes as heritage so as to further research, preservation practices and presentation debates around such sites. 

*Finally, the literal and figurative stratification of Camp Westerbork is placed in a European context by comparing the above archaeological investigations with archaeological investigations from other countries. Take, for example, the research that (also) took place within iC-ACCESS into the Roma camp Lety in the Czech Republic. Or the large-scale research in Sobibor, in which various Dutch archaeologists participated on behalf of the Dutch government. And where the results will be published in book form in the coming years under the direction of Martijn Eickhoff / NIOD.

By placing the studies in Westerbork in a European context in this way, an attempt is made to (also) show the public the political memory that is often subcutaneously, or very emphatically linked to such archaeological investigations in the various countries.

Target audience

Who is this audience that is being tried to reach with the theme year?

Major public exhibitions are viewed in Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork by more than 150,000 visitors each year. The former camp site is visited by approximately 250,000 people every year.

The backgrounds of these visitors are diverse: in the spring many young people and children visit the Herinneringscentrum in groups, in the summer months and school holidays families on holiday in the region as tourists, and in the autumn and winter “targeted visitors with an excessive interest in the history of the Holocaust”. In addition, the Herinneringscentrum is visited by people from the various “remembrance communities”: Jewish, Sinti and Roma survivors and (their) relatives, children of “wrong” parents, Indies Dutch and former Moluccan residents and their relatives.

The studies that Hendrik Beerda Brand Consultancy and TNS Nipo (Kantar) have conducted in recent years show that the average visitor of the Herinneringscentrum is around 51 years old, has completed an MBO training, comes from all over the country, is reasonably strong or is strongly linked to the subject (2019: 71%), and gives a high or particularly high rating to a visit to the Herinneringscentrum (2019: 83%). In particular the appreciation for the information provided (2019: 71 %) and the educational offer (2019: 76%) stand out in a positive sense.

In the composition of the theme year, the large difference in knowledge, interests and (personal) background of the various visitor groups will be taken into account by offering different forms of transfer and layers of information.

The choice for the content, form and design of the exhibition is, for example, partly determined on the basis of the (provisional) results of a scientific public survey that will be carried out by staff member Bas Kortholt with a Museum Grant from the NWO in 2021 – 2022. The often abrasive contemporary meanings of Camp Westerbork are central to this scientific public research. Through a public survey, in-depth interviews with visitors and representatives from the “remembrance communities”, a literature study and archival research, an attempt will be made to gain insight into the divergent interpretations and expectations that exist of Camp Westerbork today.

In any case, it is clear that the visitor will not only be passively involved, but also actively involved in “Camp Westerbork Remembered” in various places and ways. 

Online communication

In the nearly forty years of its existence, the Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork has built up close relationships with media partners from home and abroad. Through press releases, oral and online communication in various ways these partners will be approached to report about the theme year. 

In the past three years – in projects related to the persecution of Sinti and Roma (2019-2020), the 75-year liberation of Camp Westerbork (2020-2021) and the Westerbork film (2021-2022) the same method was and is applied. In this way, among others, Radio 1, Omroep Max, the Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad (NIW), the Parool, the NRC, the Telegraaf, the Algemeen Dagblad, Trouw, RTL4, SBS6, NPO1, the History Magazine, de Volkskrant, the NCRV-guide, Kidsweek, the Jeugdjournaal, RTV Drenthe, the Dagblad van het Noorden and various YouTubers have found their way to the Herinneringscentrum.

The social media channels of the Herinneringscentrum are among the most important platforms on which “Camp Westerbork Remembered” will be communicated online. For example, messages on social media, which in 2020 had a combined monthly reach of approximately 12,500 people (Facebook 7,000 – 7,500, Twitter 2,000 – 2,500, Instagram 2,000, LinkedIn 1,000), will regularly refer to events from the history of the memory of Camp Westerbork that took place on the day of placement (exactly) so many years ago.

During the duration of the public exhibition, a number of guest curators will also be given the opportunity to “take over” the social media channels of the Herinneringscentrum for a short time (partly to participate), a so-called Social Media Takeover. In addition to the regular followers of the Herinneringscentrum , such a Takeover also directs the online followers of the guest curators in the story of theme year.

Attention is also drawn to the project through various online activities. During the theme year, for example, an in-depth online lecture series will be organized with the help of renowned scientists (guest lecturers) from the Netherlands and abroad. This online lecture series can be followed via the website of the Herinneringscentrum. In 2020, this website was visited more than 450,000 times.

Finally, at the historic site of Camp Westerbork and in the Herinneringscentrum, visitors are informed about the memory of Camp Westerbork, then and now, through lectures, themed tours, historical walks, literary stages, film screenings and theater performances.

In doing so, we (also) explicitly look at and work with the principles underlying the Dutch Diversity & Inclusion Code. For example, the exhibitions will be arranged in such a way that they can also be visited by people with a physical, auditory and/or visual impairment. This is done in collaboration with the various interest groups.

In September 2021, for example, the Bartiméus Fund conducted a public survey at the Herinneringscentrum that looked at the accessibility of the museum (including the exhibitions) for people with a visual impairment. The results of this research will be included in the compilation of “Camp Westerbork Remembered”.

The theme year has a strong European dimension. Within “Camp Westerbork Remembered” there is collaboration with various international partners. For example, the British artist and academic Michael Branthwaite contextualises the Dutch memory of the war years by placing it within the European memory of the Second World War. And in the 'Houses of Darkness' sub-project, the Gedenkstätte Bergen-Belsen, the Falstadsenteret and the Herinneringscentrum are working closely together to show how we as Europeans then, and (especially) now, deal with perpetrators and perpetrators' heritage. This part of the theme year is financially supported by Creative Europe.

In addition, the content of the various activities also refers to Europe. In the first part of the exhibition, the changed meaning of camp Westerbork 1945-2021 is placed (and therefore related) against the background of important events in European and world history: the construction (and fall) of the Berlin Wall, the Cold War, the establishment of the European Union (and specifically the relationship between the Netherlands and Germany), the Balkan war, the lawsuit against Adolf Eichmann and, for example, the Blacks Live Matters protests.

Furthermore, the guest curatorship of Martijn Eickhoff and the GIA (in which foreign students with a transnational perspective also participate) also partly relies on research that has been conducted in an international context: as mentioned, in 2017, within the framework of the international collaborative project iC-ACCESS, non-invasive archaeological research was carried out at both the Heidelager - the accommodation of the guards of Camp Westerbork - and the execution site of Westerbork (where approximately 50 resistance fighters were executed during the war). Both studies were led by the University of Staffordshire.

Within iC-ACCESS, a group of European universities such as the University of Amsterdam, the Freie Universitat Berlin and the University of Staffordshire worked together with Remembrance Centers such as Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen to find new ways in telling the story of the Second World War. 

In order to understand the complex memorial cultures attached to such Nazi camp sites, the iC-ACCESS consortium approached (un)official historical interpretations which operate in relation to them and their connections to memorial paradigms and public usages of history, their particular archaeology, fluctuations in the display of memorials, framings of material traces and divergent negotiations of communities of experience. At the same time, the project took on the transnational and historically entangled approach to campscapes as heritage so as to further research, preservation practices and presentation debates around such sites. 

Finally, the literal and figurative stratification of Camp Westerbork is placed in a European context by comparing the mentioned archaeological investigations with archaeological investigations from other countries. Take, for example, the research that (also) took place within iC-ACCESS into the Roma camp Lety in the Czech Republic. Or the large-scale research in Sobibor, in which various Dutch archaeologists participated on behalf of the Dutch government. And where the results will be published in book form in the coming years under the direction of Martijn Eickhoff / NIOD.

By placing the studies in Westerbork in a European context in this way, an attempt is made to (also) show the public the political memory that is often subcutaneously, or very emphatically linked to such archaeological investigations in the various countries.