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After the summer holidays of 1941, Jewish primary school children in The Hague were only allowed to attend school buildings on Bezemstraat in the heart of the old Jewish neighbourhood, or on Scheveningen's Duinstraat. The German occupiers had decreed that Jewish and non-Jewish children could no longer be placed in the same class. During the following years of war, more than 12,000 Jews, including 1,700 children, were deported from the city. Most of them did not survive the concentration camps.

As early as 1948, Theo van der Nahmer, a sculptor from The Hague, created a plaque in memory of these Jewish children at the school on Bezemstraat: 'Rachel weeps'. With the redevelopment of the Spuikwartier at the beginning of the 21st century, a special and new monument was added. A new square has been created on the site of the former Jewish school. This square bears the name of Rabbi Maarsen, the clergyman who was very important to The Hague's Jewish community and who was murdered in 1943.

Since the monument had to be playful and also stimulate tolerance and respect for each other's way of life, a playground was chosen. On a round playground, The Hague artists Sara Benhamou and Eric de Vries have placed six chairs of different heights. They appear to be piled up, no longer in use. At the same time, they serve as ladders or climbing frames. In this way, children of today can symbolically make contact with the fallen children in heaven. In the chairs, the names and ages of 400 children are engraved in the handwriting of children from the Princess Marijk School. Those names represent all 1700 young victims from The Hague.

The artists have placed the following text around the playground:

The Jewish neighbourhood is gone. Gone are the children. Deported and murdered in the Second World War. Because they were Jewish. 1700 Jewish children from The Hague never returned. Many of them played here. They went to school here. Let us not forget them and let us make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.

On 20 November 2006, during the International Day of the Rights of the Child, the monument was unveiled. A replica of the older memorial plaque was hung on the garden wall of the Nieuwe Kerk. The original is in the Museon. With the arrival of the Jewish Monument in 2018, the Jewish Children's Monument has been given a new place on the square.