Launch of Mapping Hiding Places Website

In 2015, Dienke Hondius, working as a university lecturer and researcher at VU Amsterdam and collaborating on international educational projects at the Anne Frank House, began compiling a collection of sources and data on hiding places where Jews, and possibly also Roma and Sinti, were held for short and long periods during the Holocaust. The research focuses on locations, places, and the dimensions of time and space. Together with VU History students and with technical assistance from institutions such as the University Library VU, Geoplaza, and Spinlab, she began researching and mapping locations in and around Amsterdam. Students contribute to the research project through assignments, papers, and sometimes theses. For example, bachelor’s student Kevin Rolleman wrote a thesis on the so-called “Jew hunters,” a group known as the Kolonne Henneicke, consisting of about forty men who, primarily in Amsterdam, tried to track down as many Jewish people in hiding as possible. American students at Brandeis University near Boston participated when Hondius was a visiting professor there, and also at Stockton University in New Jersey, when she was a visiting researcher and lecturer there, significantly boosted the research. Students from Stockton University collaborated on mapping Jewish hiding histories from many different European countries. Unfortunately, the coronavirus crisis put an untimely end to this. However, she continues the research in Amsterdam through Zoom interviews with survivors worldwide and through assignments in digitized collections to VU students. Since the 1990s, impressive collections of interviews and paper memoirs have become available for research, and these now offer a wealth of possibilities.

Many local researchers and researchers studying individual and family histories are compiling valuable data. In the research project led by VU Amsterdam and CLUE+, this diverse data is being collected step by step to enhance our understanding of patterns and trends in Jewish hiding – both in the Netherlands and Belgium, and across Europe.

Today marks the launch of the research project’s first website, showcasing several maps and stories from and about the period in hiding. Several people contributed to each story, and dozens of people contributed to some. The site also offers a way to submit information about a hiding place.

At a gathering at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam on the occasion of Holocaust Memorial Day on Monday, January 24, 2022, Professor Mirjam van Praag, President of the Executive Board of VU Amsterdam, launched the website.