It is ‘in your face’ and that is exactly the intention: the name monument that was unveiled yesterday on the station square of Alkmaar. Anyone who enters or leaves the city can hardly help but reflect briefly on the events of the Second World War. “These people did not die, they were murdered. We cannot forget them.”
“Very impressive.” The unveiling on Sunday afternoon was solemn, warm and certainly emotional. In the words of mayor Anja Schouten, ‘everything came together’ here.
In a conversation with Alkmaar Central the mayor looked back on the long preparation that preceded this day. “We achieved this by always doing what we thought was necessary, together and carefully.”
The initiative for the monument came from VVD councilor John van der Rhee in 2019. “And that was passed unanimously by the council,” he recalls. “It is also very important. It is true that I took the initiative, but I do not think that this belongs to me, this story belongs to Alkmaar. That is what it was about.”
Van der Rhee found it incomprehensible that such a monument did not exist until today in this city, with a long Jewish tradition, with its own synagogue and with one hundred and eighty Alkmaar victims of the Holocaust.
(Text continues below the video of Alkmaar Centraal)
To view this content you must accept cookies.
The municipality of Alkmaar subsequently did not proceed overnight realization of the unanimous wish of the council. “We have started over very often,” says Mayor Schouten.
“We have very carefully put together a group with people from the Jewish community and other Alkmaar residents. They all contributed ideas together.” The design, the location: everything had to be right, everything had to be done carefully.
Van der Rhee agrees. “We initially had another location in mind, but it actually meant nothing for Jewish Alkmaar. Then we chose the station.”
Had to buy the ticket ourselves
The station was the place where Alkmaar’s Jews left, where many of them saw their city for the last time. On March 5, 1942, they were forced here by the Nazis to buy their own train ticket.
The Alkmaar Jews were then killed in the extermination camps in the east. “They were murdered,” Van der Rhee emphasizes, touched. “A racist, anti-Semitic murder.”
“A Jewish saying says: If your name is forgotten, you will die a second time.”
The fact that the municipality of Alkmaar wanted to handle this history carefully also resulted in a later delivery of the moment. The bronze had already been cast, when it turned out that three names had been adopted and changed by the occupying forces – so they were not recorded correctly in the archives.
“There were Nazi names,” the mayor says. “Then we looked at each other and said: we are going to start again. We have chosen to be careful all those times.”
The text continues below the photo.
Care was also what designer Niko Hoebe always had in mind when he created the monument. The symbolism has been well thought out: “The life cut short,” he points out. Because that’s how it happened.
“It is precisely those names that are so important,” Van der Rhee emphasizes. “A Jewish saying says: If your name is forgotten, you die a second time.”
That has been prevented here, the names are cast in bronze, they can never be forgotten. The monument will welcome every train passenger who enters Alkmaar. And that’s a good thing, says Mayor Schouten: “Now that it’s here, we can never imagine doing without it.”
NH previously spoke with the maker of the monument. Read that interview again below.