Verzetsmuseum (Dutch Resistance Museum)
Address: Plantage Kerklaan 61, 1018 CX Amsterdam
Opening hours: Tue-Friday 10:00-17:00 Sa-Mo 12:00-17:00
Entrance: 5.50 euro, 7-15 years 3 euro, 0-6 years free
Phone: +31 (0)20 6202535
Email: info@verzetsmuseum.org
Website: www.verzetsmuseum.org
It is the museum’s task to stimulate the visitor’s curiosity to learn about the most momentous period in the Dutch twentieth-century history. The form and content of the permanent exhibition is now geared to include visitors who might not have much prior knowledge of the subject. The permanent exhibition takes visitors back to the thirties and forties by using street scenes and house interiors.
Within these streets and interiors, moving personal documents and photographs, supplemented with video images and sound fragments, tell the story of people who were confronted with dilemmas by the German occupation, and were forced to make choices. At various points, the visitors are themselves involved very directly in such dilemmas.
The exhibition tells a chronological story from approximately 1930 to 1950, in which information is offered in various ‘layers’. A visitor striding through the exhibition will get an overall picture of a rather indolent Dutch society in the thirties, experience the shock of the unexpected German invasion, then discover that both the oppression and resistance to it gradually intensify in the occupation years as the war progresses, finally to realize that experiences of this period are still playing a role in today’s society. A visitor looking a little more closely will be able to gather more detailed information, particularly from individual examples.
For those visitors who have specific interest or have just developed one can immerse themselves in a number of subjects on the ‘Information Island’.
Much more attention has been paid to the context in which the resistance took place, the context of everyday life in a politically and denominationally segregated society, in which the church played a very important role, the context of a society in a time of occupation in which most people were far too embroiled in day-to-day worries to even think about daring to involve themselves in any kind of resistance, and in which still others opted for collaboration.
Using authentic objects as well as all kinds of modern techniques, the Dutch Resistance Museum evokes a powerful atmospheric picture of the time, and ‘recounts’ events mainly on the basis of personal examples that appeal directly to visitors, and with which they can identify. This will not only capture visitor’s attention but also cause them to think about their own behavior today.