Hollandsche Schouwburg

A theatre opened in 1892 on Plantage Middenlaan, repurposed during the German occupation as the assembly point from which around 46,000 Amsterdam Jews were deported. Transports went via Westerbork to the extermination camps Auschwitz and Sobibor; only a fraction returned. After the war the interior was stripped and in 1962 turned into a quiet memorial: an open courtyard with a basalt column on a Star of David, and a wall bearing the family names of the murdered. The former foyer now houses a permanent exhibition as part of the National Holocaust Museum. The site is silent, spare, undramatic - precisely what makes the visit cut so deep.