Text

Soon after the Scheveningen prison was used by the Germans to imprison Dutch people who resisted the occupying forces, it was cynically nicknamed the 'Oranjehotel'. When Major E.P. Weber, shortly after the liberation, found so many memories of prisoners there, he decided to turn it into a place of remembrance. He took the initiative to form the Oranjehotel Committee, which ensured that the death cell (cell no. 601) was dedicated as a monument on 5 October 1946. Three years later the gate through which prisoners were led to the Waalsdorpervlakte for execution became part of the monument. On the wall on the Van Alkemadelaan, next to the gate, a bronze commemorative plaque has been mounted with a text by former prisoner Antonie Donker.

A third and final part of the memorial was unveiled by Queen Juliana on 16 September 1950: an approximately 3 metre high relief in the outer wall of the prison on the side of Stevinstraat. This relief was made by the famous Flemish sculptor Albert Termote, who lived in Voorburg, after a design by architect Dirk Roosenburg. It shows chained figures around an Orange tree without a crown. The prisoners stand within a barbed wire fence with snakes coiling around their legs. To the left and right of the tree are chiselled the words 'they were united'.

The image symbolism of the plate is clear. The tree represents the dethroned Royal Family. The captured men and women cling to it. The snakes around their legs symbolise the occupier. Is there still a way to the freedom that we fought so single-mindedly for, the prisoners seem to wonder. Termote has depicted their grief and fear in a subdued manner. As exuberant, baroque and full of drama as he usually knew how to shape his other sculptures, he has depicted the sense of resignation in the commemorative plaque Oranjehotel.