AMSTERDAM — More than 70 years after tens of thousands of Dutch Jews were deported and killed by the Nazis, the Netherlands is finally getting a national Holocaust museum.

It will be three years before the new museum is completed, but on Monday it opens its doors to host a harrowing exhibition of paintings by actor and artist Jeroen Krabbe.

The location of the museum, a former teacher training school in the heart of Amsterdam’s old Jewish quarter, is a small but hugely significant ray of light in the dark history of Jews in the Dutch capital during World War II.

Some 600 Jewish children were spirited to safety via the school from a neighboring kindergarten where they were being held while awaiting deportation, said curator Annemiek Gringold. On the other side of the street stands the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a theater used by the Nazi occupiers as a gathering point for Jews who were rounded up — often with the help of Dutch collaborators paid a bounty for each person they betrayed — and transported to their deaths.

In all, 104,000 Dutch Jews were among the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. The theater is now home to a memorial to those victims. Nearby are also the Jewish Historical Museum and a 17th-century Portuguese Synagogue.

Originally published HERE