Oranjehotel Door
From the collection of the Overloon War Museum, with the permission of the Dutch Foundation Oranjehotel
h 230 cm x w 95 cm
1940-1945
This wooden door once closed off the distinctive small archway in the long prison wall on Van Alkemadelaan in the Dutch seaside town of Scheveningen. During the war, this notorious prison quickly became known to the Dutch as the Oranjehotel (Lit. Orange Hotel), given that many Dutch Resistance fighters – including members of the Resistance group De Geuzen, Anton de Kom and Boy Ecury – were interned here.
The prisoners were often tortured when they were interrogated, followed by the Nazis passing sentence. An estimated 25,000 people were locked up in the Oranjehotel for varying periods of time. Thousands of them received long sentences in German concentration camps and several hundred prisoners were condemned to death. Waiting to be executed on the Waalsdorpervlakte in the sand dunes, 215 prisoners spent their last night there in a prison cell on death row: they often left messages of fear or hope on the back wall. The next day they were marched through the small archway, via this door, to their deaths.