Residents of the municipality of Midden-Drenthe can cast their vote in a very special place this year: the Kamp Westerbork memorial center. The municipality has selected this location because of the symbolic meaning of the remembrance center.
The elections for the Lower House will take place on Wednesday 29 October 2025. The remembrance center is open on that day from 7.30 am to 9 pm as an official voting location. Visitors have free access to the museum that day. In collaboration with the Anne Frank House, special red voting pencils with a quote from Anne Frank are used.
The location was chosen because of the symbolic meaning. “It is precisely in a place that recalls the loss of freedom and oppression that the importance of voting rights, democracy and the rule of law is emphasized,” reports Middle-Drenthe.
Mayor Jan Zwiers casts the first vote that morning: “Voting is the core of our democracy. That this is possible at this place, where freedom and human rights were so under pressure in the past makes a big impression,” says Zwiers in a statement. According to the mayor, democracy and the rule of law are not self -evident. “Especially at a time when this is under pressure worldwide, it is important that we use our voting rights.”
Director Bertien MINCO of the Remembrance Center adds: “It is precisely in times when the democracy and rule of law are under increasing pressure in all kinds of places in the world, it is extra important to protect this. By setting up the reminder center as a polling station, we try to make a symbolic contribution to this. People can cast their vote on this historic location and get free access to the museum.”
Camp Westerbork was a Voorvoerkamp during the Second World War. Between 1942 and 1945, more than 100,000 Dutch Jews, 245 Sinti and Roma and a few dozen resistance fighters were deported from the camp to destruction camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, Mauthausen and Sobibór. Only about 5000 of them survived the Holocaust.