Exhibition Westerbork 'Far away and near'

This year we commemorate the end of the Second World War and celebrate that we regained our freedom eighty years ago. 

In light of 80 years of freedom, Museum Sjoel Elburg offers the exhibition Westerbork Far away and Close from February 10 to June 28, 2025. 

The central focus of the exhibition is the 'barracks', as a metaphor for the barracks of Westerbork, from which 107,000 Jews, Roma, Sinti and opponents of the Nazi regime were transported to the camps 'in the East' and murdered there. only 5,000 of them returned. Most Jewish residents of Elburg and the Northwest Veluwe were also deported from these barracks.

Westerbork In addition, the exhibition highlights the lesser-known periods of Westerbork camp, such as the refugee camp before 'Westerbork' became a Polizeiliches Durchgangslager; the internment camp in which 'wrong' Dutch people were imprisoned immediately after the liberation; the repatriation camp that Westerbork was in the 1950s/60s for the reception of Indian Dutch and Moluccans.

Two artists The exhibition also features work by artists. Drawings by the young Jewish artist Leo Kok were chosen, who spent two years in Westerbork and recorded the horror of the deportations in pencil. There is also work by Jeltje Hoogenkamp. She compellingly portrays the drama of the concentration and extermination camps. With her paintings, the artist wants to bring the Holocaust to the attention of current and future generations.