Glass teardrops

In the Hollandsche Schouwburg, glass “teardrops” commemorate the lives of more Holocaust victims. Each drop tells the story of someone who was imprisoned in the theatre during the period when it was used as a deportation site. Prisoners’ children were placed in the crèche across the street, next door to the former teachers’ college. By holding an audio device up to the drops, visitors can listen to prisoners’ eyewitness accounts. The audio fragments are based on personal letters, diary excerpts, and the occasional recorded testimony. Like the forget-me-nots, the teardrops restore the victims’ humanity. The goal is to show them as individuals and not merely as victims, curator Annemiek Gringold told The New York Times. “That’s the only way to do justice to someone’s memory. Otherwise someone is reduced to what the Nazis made them into. We don’t want that.”