In d’Olde Bieb in the Wielewaal, buttons are collected for a monument in the Kamp Westerbork memorial center. Anne Kuipers from Hoogeveen took the initiative for this action. He is part of the Wednesday morning coffee group of the d’Olde Bieb in Hoogeveen and this group thought it was a good idea to participate.
The starting signal for the action was given in a TV broadcast by Jeroen Krabbé. “His family is of Jewish descent and has experienced terrible things,” says 72-year-old Kuipers. The intention is to collect 1.5 million buttons. “A wall will be made of this that represents every child who was killed during the Second World War,” Kuipers continues.
Button barrel
Camp Westerbork was a transit camp near Hooghalen in the former municipality of Westerbork during the Second World War. From the camp, more than 100,000 prisoners, Jews and Roma living in the Netherlands, were deported by train to concentration and extermination camps in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. Of these people, only 5,000 Jews and 32 Roma survived the war.
The coffee group was enthusiastic about Kuipers’ initiative and has set up a barrel in which people can deposit buttons. “You can do that during our coffee morning every Wednesday from 9.30 a.m. to 12.00 p.m. People from the neighborhood come to drink coffee. It’s a very social event.” The barrel is of course also there during other opening hours of d’Olde Bieb at Wielewaal 5.
Earthquake
The campaign has been running for several weeks and buttons have already been donated, but according to Kuipers, it was pushed to the background by the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. The group has collected clothing for victims of this disaster in recent weeks. The button action in Hoogeveen follows that of students of the De Nieuwe Veste school community in Hardenberg. There the action is a great success and 700,000 knots have already been handed in.
Artist, actor and director Jeroen Krabbé was inspired for the button monument by the Bialik Buttons Project of the Melbourne Holocaust Museum. He is one of the eight guest curators of the exhibition The Memory of camp Westerbork . The exhibition curated by him can be seen from July in the museum of Camp Westerbork. The Knot Monument will also have a place on it.
Read also: Drenthe collects for Turkey and Syria. “You shouldn’t think about waking up under the rubble”