As you wander around one of the world’s most fascinating cities, you’ll see a lot of places that have significance in the 1940-45 part of Amsterdam’s history — and most of those aspects are hidden.  Have a look at the entries I’ve made here about specific places and how they were important at the time of the Holocaust and resistance — and other entries that just show some of the less obvious aspects of places everybody goes.

For example, Nieuwmarkt is the picturesque chunk of the city wall which dates back to 1400 or so, with market stalls and lots of nice cafes nearby if you visit it today.  The building has an incredible history.  Rembrandt painted The Anatomy Lesson in the theater upstairs, as recounted in Nina Siegal’s novel of the same name.  Here’s the market on a stormy spring day in 2015.

But this is what it looked like when barbed wire lined the length of Geldersekade, one of the oldest canals in the city, to mark off the Jewish Quarter.