The Auschwitz Monument

Just behind the lush greenery of the Hortus Botanicus, nestled in the peaceful surroundings of Wertheim Park, stands a monument that stops you in your tracks. 

This is the Auschwitz Monument, designed by the celebrated Dutch writer and artist Jan Wolkers and unveiled in 1977. What makes this memorial so striking is its surface of broken mirrors. Even shattered, they still reflect the sky above you. That was entirely intentional. Wolkers believed that after Auschwitz, the sky could never be whole again. The fractured reflections make that feeling tangible in a way that words alone cannot. The monument carries a simple but profound message: ‘Never Again Auschwitz’. 

Those three words speak to a determination to remember and to keep working toward a world where such horrors cannot take root again. The numbers here are almost impossible to process. In the Netherlands alone, between 225,000 and 280,000 people lost their lives during World War II. Of those, 95,000 Dutch people were killed in the death camps of Auschwitz and Sobibor. Only a few hundred survived. Every year on the last Sunday of January, thousands of people gather here for the National Holocaust Commemoration. Standing here now, you are standing in a place of deep memory.