Category: Netherlands
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Memento mori
Memento mori When walking around in a graveyard we may be content of still belonging to the realm of the living, but it also inevitably reminds us of our own mortality. This is certainly the case in the graveyard of the Portuguese Jews near Amsterdam. Many of the gravestones carry images that denote death: an…
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Anno Mundi 5490
Anno Mundi 5490 The Jewish cemetery at ‘Ouderkerk aan de Amstel’ near Amsterdam is called Beth Haim which means House of Life. This tells us something about the Sephardim philosophy of life – and death. The picture shows a detail of a partly submerged gravestone in which we see a shepherdess with her cattle. A…
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Watery grave
Watery grave I saw this sculpted marble gravestone at the cemetery of the Portuguese Jewish community in ‘Ouderkerk aan de Amstel’. The Sephardim Jews had started settling in Amsterdam in the 16th century and their cemetery in nearby Ouderkerk dates from 1614. I used to pass and visit it regularly on my walks along the…
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“Nelken” stage
“Nelken” stage Carnations, thousands of them, growing on the stage of “Nelken”, the ballet by Pina Bausch. Since its premiere in 1982 it has been performed by Tanztheater Wuppertal numerous times all over the world. I saw it twice in Amsterdam, in 1995 and then again in 2016. Meanwhile Pina Bausch had died but her…
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A tribute to HM
A tribute to HM I was immersed in looking at The Sheaf, one of Matisse’s large collages, made during the latter years of his life when he was bedridden and not able to paint anymore. Then a visitor entered my field of view. I took her appearance for a fortunate incident, a fleeting tribute to…
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Not to forget
Not to forget At the beginning of the 2nd World War there were 17.000 Jewish residents in the part of Amsterdam where I live. During the war 13.000 of them were deported and murdered in the concentration camps. When I walk through my neighbourhood I can ‘stumble’ sometimes upon little brass plates in the pavement.…
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Anne Frank
Anne Frank There she stands, Anne Frank, on Merwedeplein in Amsterdam where she lived 9 years of her short life till 1942. On 6 July of that year she went with her family into hiding on the Prinsengracht in what now is known as the Anne Frank House. Sculptor Jet Schepp has portrayed her all…
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Liberation Day
Liberation Day For the 75th time this year. Every year on the 5th of May we celebrate the end of the occupation by Nazi Germany. On the 7th of May 1945 the allied forces drove through this street, then called the Noorder Amstellaan, into Amsterdam, cheered and applauded by its inhabitants. A year later the…
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Marken
Marken A little further than the quiet villages of Waterland but still close to Amsterdam we find Marken. In the past a fishing village on a tiny island in the Zuyder Zee, now connected by road to the mainland. With its typical wooden houses around the harbour it has kept some of its looks of…
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Holysloot
Holysloot A one-street, dead-end village in Waterland, at 2 km from Ransdorp. Now also protected and lying within the municipal limits of Amsterdam. With a history going back more than 700 years it already figures under the name of Hoolesloot on this historical map of Waterland from the year 1288. Photo of the week: Holysloot,…
καιρός remembered 