The Hague Resistance and Liberation Memorial

The monument is situated opposite the "Vredespaleis" (Peace Palace) and is composed on a square with on the one side two high columns and in front of these columns there are four smaller columns and a stone wall running behind all columns.
This stone wall symbolizes a "dike of obstinacy of the unyielding". The four smaller columns represent different groups of the community: neutral, Roman Catholic, Protestant and Jewish. The text on the smaller columns cannot be deciphered any more but according to some research it ought to read as follows:

The first column:
"Remove the tyranny. 1940."

The second column:
"May their souls be connected inside the band of the living."

The third column:
"Don’t let yourself be conquered by evil, but conquer evil by doing well."

The fourth column:
"Who pierces my hearth. 1945."

At the other side of the square there are a number of benches and a memorial column with the following text:
"As the city of the Royal Court and seat of the Government, The Hague had been targeted with aerial attacks already on May 10th 1940, the very first day of the treacherous offensive towards The Netherlands. The first destructions took place and the first victims were killed. Because of the war and the occupation between May 1940 and the liberation in May 1945 almost twenty thousand of our co citizens would loose their lives, as soldiers, as resistance fighters, as deported persons, as slave labourer, as prisoner in a house of correction or concentration camp, as a victim of the bombing raids and of starvation during the last winter of the war, but above all, as persecuted persons because of race or religion. Amongst those, over sixteen thousand Jewish co citizens did not survive the camps of destruction.

This monument intents to memorize all, without segregation, that have lost their lives because of the fallacy from which the National Socialism has been derived. It calls in silence to be alert for motives in the human minds that may stimulate such fallacy and may lead to such inhuman political systems. In that sense this wants to be a sign for future generations.''

The monument has been adopted by the Segbroek College.

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Source

• Text: Mia van den Berg / Herdenken-DenHaag.nl
• Photos: Mia van den Berg