Trails&Traces

Posted by Niamh Hunt

Trails&Traces is a performance about the visible and invisible marks left behind by the history of Camp Westerbork. They are traces in the landscape, in personal memories, and in the stories of those who were forced to live there. During the Second World War, the transit camp on the heathland of Drenthe became the departure point for more than 107,000 Jews, Sinti, and Roma who were deported to extermination camps in the East. Only 5,000 of them ever returned.

In 2025, the Preparatory Programme of Garage TDI created Behind the Façade on the former camp grounds. With Trails&Traces, in 2026, we widen our focus to the area beyond the camp itself. A narrow-gauge railway which runs past the water treatment plant, the crematorium, and the camp farm, all the way to the Oranjekanaal. 

In this new performance, the young actors lead their audience along that historical route. They give voice to forgotten stories of giving care and bearing cares. Stories not only from within the barbed-wire perimeter, but also from the world outside it.

Created in collaboration with the Camp Westerbork Memorial Centre and within the context of Theatre of Remembrance, Trails&Traces reveals how the past continues to echo in the present.

It brings the traces of history back into view and carries them forward through a new generation.

Virus of the Mind

Posted by Niamh Hunt

In Virus of the Mind young people explore how perceptions are formed. Before and during World War II, the Nazis made extensive use of propaganda, misinformation, and myth-making. The separation of education for Jewish children was an important part of this.

What fears lie within us that make us susceptible to ‘us-them’ thinking, that make us look for a scapegoat for problems and see others less and less as ‘human beings’?

The young people look for parallels in history to warn us in today’s complex world, where it is increasingly difficult to determine what is true and what is not.

Against forgetting

Posted by Maite

Against forgetting is a theatrical route performed by four youngsters from Amsterdam, leading you along forgotten stories. During a walk of thirty minutes, they will take you from Wertheim Plantsoen to the National Holocaust Name Monument. On the way they will tell the stories behind some names through music. We will observe David Sealtiel painting in his souterrain on Waterlooplein, how the twins Duizend say goodbye to their classmate on the tram, how the girl with the headscarf looks out the window of the train and how Betje holds up in the kitchen of the concentration camp. The scenarios were written by the youngsters, trying to answer the question: why do we keep forgetting?