Wertheimpark: The Broken Mirrors of Auschwitz
Why is it significant?
Walk into the park, under the tall trees, and look for a flat area of glass panels lying on the ground. They are mirrors, and they are cracked, shattered on purpose. Bend over them, as many visitors quietly do, and you see the sky above you, broken into pieces, and your own face among the cracks.
Key Facts
| Place | Wertheimpark: The Broken Mirrors of Auschwitz |
|---|---|
| Address | Plantage Middenlaan 1, 1018 DA Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.36790, 4.90890 |
| Part of Walk | Mokum's Lost Quarter: The Jewish Heart of Amsterdam and the Plantage |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk into the park, under the tall trees, and look for a flat area of glass panels lying on the ground. They are mirrors, and they are cracked, shattered on purpose. Bend over them, as many visitors quietly do, and you see the sky above you, broken into pieces, and your own face among the cracks.
This is the Auschwitz memorial, called Nooit Meer, Never Again, made by the writer and artist Jan Wolkers. It was first unveiled in 1977 at a cemetery in the east of the city and moved here, close to the old Jewish neighbourhoods, in 1993. Beneath it, an urn holds ashes brought from Auschwitz. Wolkers explained the idea simply: after Auschwitz, the heavens could never again be reflected whole.
Every year, at the end of January, around the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the national Auschwitz commemoration is held here. Survivors, and now their children and grandchildren, walk past the broken mirrors and lay flowers.
The park itself carries the name of Abraham Carel Wertheim, a Jewish banker, politician and philanthropist of the nineteenth century, who supported hospitals, schools and the arts across the city, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. When he died in 1897 the city named this garden after him. A few steps east of the park runs the Henri Polaklaan, named after the leader of the diamond workers you met on Uilenburg. The handsome brick building there, De Burcht, designed by Hendrik Petrus Berlage, was his union's headquarters, built around 1900, and its name means the stronghold.
So in a few metres you have the whole arc: a Jewish banker who gave to the city, a Jewish union leader who fought for its workers, and the memorial to what was done to their people. Now continue along the Plantage Middenlaan to a theatre facade with a garden behind it.