History of Sorts

Approximately 105,000 OF THE 140,000 Jews in the Netherlands were murdered during the Holocaust. The attempt to erase the Jews from the country did not happen overnight ,it was a gradual process.

Every few weeks new measures were introduced to make the life for the Dutch Jews as hard as possible. Some of these measures appeared to be quite subtle and non malicious , like the handing in of bicycles.

In June 1942 the Jews in Utrecht were required to hand in their bikes, the language used in this announcement(picture above) was important because for a bystander it looks quite harmless, they could assume that the Jews were not forced to give up their bikes, but were requested in a friendly manner to comply to the announcement. The line in the middle of the poster(in bold letters) states “The opportunity to handing in bicycles exists at the cleansing post Groeneweg”