Lotty's Bench

August 26, 1945: Lotty Veffer arrived in Amsterdam. She was the only member of her family to have survived the war. Her parents and younger sister Carla had been gassed in Sobibor. There was no heartfelt welcome for her, and eventually she was forced to spend her first night back "home" in Amsterdam on a park bench on the Apollolaan. In September 2017, the ninety-six-year-old Lotty was honored with her own monument, a bench on the exact same spot where she had spent that first night. Lotty passed away on July 27, 2018.

In Amsterdam alone there are more than eighty monuments created to remember the Holocaust. There are still many more locations that tell parts of the story: buildings, squares, and streets that were once silent witnesses to the darkest page in the city's history. The ninety-five vignettes in Lotty's Bench explore these monuments and locations to make clear how inextricably Amsterdam's history is linked to the persecution of its Jews.

Gerben Post works for the Anne Frank Foundation as an educator and historian. He also organizes walking tours through the old Jewish neighborhoods of Amsterdam.