Around 25,000 people were held there. Despite their constraints, they found ways to express themselves: embroidery, wooden dice, drawings with text. More than eighty years later, these objects tell their stories in a display case built right through a crumbling wall, on a floor as warped as a hoop. Welcome to the Oranjehotel National Monument.
Scheveningen, during the Occupation. The ‘Oranjehotel’ housed Jews, Roma, Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses, communists, black marketeers and members of the Resistance. They had little to occupy themselves with. Yet they found creative ways – consciously or unconsciously – to leave their stories behind.
“Despite the challenges, it blends into the space quite naturally”
For example, some women use their bed sheets for embroidery, occasionally using threads they pull from their own clothes. One of them is Titia Gorter. She creates embroideries through which she expresses her feelings, often with a touch of humour. She sends many of these embroideries to people outside the prison.
Titia did not survive the occupation; she died in Ravensbrück in March 1945. Her embroideries, however, did return. One of them now hangs in a special display case in the centre of the prison, which has since become a museum and educational centre about the Second World War.
An eye-catcher in two galleries
As a curator, Nora Willemsen often stands in front of that display case. “It’s one of our showpieces,” she explains. “As a visitor, you really can’t help but notice it. And because it’s built right through the wall from one gallery to the next – and even runs up one wall – you can hardly miss it. And the great thing is: despite the technical challenges, it blends into the space so naturally.”
However, building the display case was by no means straightforward. The architect in charge of the renovation presented SDB Vitrines with a challenge…
Nothing was straight
The Oranjehotel was built in 1918. And nothing about it is straight. So, according to the architect, the existing walls were not to be altered in any way. Ragged edges or not, perfectly straight display cases or not. The creaking wooden floor? That, too, had to remain unchanged.
SDB Vitrinebouw studied a stack of drawings, visited the site three times and took measurements on the building site. With over sixty years’ experience to draw on, solutions were quickly devised for most of the display cabinets.
But that one eye-catcher…
“Exactly what you want as a curator: to bring the story to life”
In the end, the solution was as pragmatic as it was skilful: the ragged edge was filled with expanding foam, and the flexible SDB system did the rest. The result: a display case that appears to fit perfectly and, despite its imposing appearance, blends seamlessly into its surroundings. Both literally and figuratively.
Encouraging visitors to linger
“I realise it’s a technical masterpiece,” says Nora. “I’m really pleased with it, because now I can make the most of every angle: we can hang objects inside it, place them on the two tables, illuminate them from literally every angle… That allows me to really encourage visitors to linger.”
Take Titia’s embroidery, for example. The old fabric, the threads, the delicate stitches: you can almost feel them, despite the glass. “Exactly what you want as a curator,” concludes Nora: “Bringing the story to life – that’s what our work is all about. This display case helps me enormously with that.”
If you’d like to see all this for yourself, do take a look at the website of the Oranjehotel National Monument.
