I’ve been fighting a bad cold as well as dealing with the fallout from our cancellation debacle at the University of Amsterdam, so I haven’t gotten out much. This is a great pity as the weather had been good, though now it’s turned rainy.
This evening I will give a talk on science vs. religion at Tilburg University, founded as a Catholic school in 1927. Now it’s only technically Catholic, and is described by Wikipedia as “a public research university specializing in the social and behavioral sciences, economics, law, business sciences, theology and humanities. . . ”
We have had no threats of disruption (Tilburg is a few hours south of Amsterdam), so I’m not worried about that. Tomorrow Maarten Boudry and I, plus perhaps a surprise guest or two, will tape the discussion that was deplatformed at the University of Amsterdam.
At any rate, here are a few snapshots from my limited incursions in Amsterdam.
I’m surprised that this is my third visit to Amsterdam, and up to now I’d missed the “Stolpersteine” (literally, “stumbling stones”) which one encounters from time to time in the pavement in front of houses. They’re easy to miss, which is why I haven’t seen them before. Wikipedia describes them like this:
. . . . a ten-centimetre (3.9 in) concrete cube bearing a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution. Literally, it means ‘stumbling stone’ and metaphorically ‘stumbling block’.
The Stolpersteine project, initiated by the German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992, aims to commemorate persons at the last place that they chose freely to reside, work or study (with exceptions possible on a case-by-case basis) before they fell victim to Nazi terror, forced euthanasia, eugenics, deportation to a concentration or extermination camp, or escaped persecution by emigration or suicide. As of June 2023, 100,000.Stolpersteine have been laid, making the Stolpersteine project the world’s largest decentralized memorial.
They mostly commemorate Jews, but are also laid for murdered Romani, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and others persecuted by the Nazis. Here are three I found within two blocks from where I’m staying (there is a pair representing a man and his wife):
It says, “Here lived Elisa Frederika De Jon van Biema, born 1901, abducted 1944 to Westerbork, killed January 27, 1945, Auschwitz.” Westerbork was the infamous Dutch camp where detainees, including Anne Frank and her family, were kept until they were transferred to the concentration camps (in this case Auschwitz). Elisa was killed at 44.
Below are the stones for a Jewish man and his wife who were deported together; the man died at Westerbork and his wife at Auschwitz. Prisoners were sent to other camps, too, like Sobibór. All told, about 98,000 Jews were deported from Westerbork to the camps, and nearly all of them were immediately gassed upon arrival.
Although some people object because these small stones allow people to walk over memorials for dead Jews, I find them moving because, once you look for them, they are easy to find but distressingly common. The houses of the murdered, of course, are still there, so the memorials are ineffably evocative.
Another Jewish man and wife, arrested on April 8, 1943, and gassed at Sobibór only two weeks later.
On a lighter note, here are two pictures from the local “supermarket”, which is a market but much smaller than American supermarkets. Nevertheless, it has a huge supply of cheese, which of course is a speciality of the Netherlands. Look at all the different kinds of cheese!
If you follow this site, you know I always check out the cat food in markets, to see if there’s any local flavor to what they feed the moggies. Here there was nothing special (France has an array of gourmet-named cat foods), but they did have paté. The label reads, “complete pet food for adult cats.”
And a takeout meal last night from the local Balinese restaurant: rice, beef, chicken, eggplant, beans, and mixed veggies:
