National monument

The National Monument on the Dam in Amsterdam is a monument for the commemoration of the Second World War in the Netherlands. The monument is central to the annual National Remembrance Day on May 4, attended by the king.

The National Monument was designed by architect J.J.P. Oud. The monument consists of a pylon with sculptures and a memorial wall with reliefs. The sculptures are by sculptor Johannes Anton Rädecker, and the reliefs by Paul Grégoire. In front of the monument stand two lion figures as guards, created by Jan Willem Rädecker.

The 22-meter high pylon is made of concrete clad with travertine, a marble-like, porous limestone from Tuscany. On the front side, four bound male figures are depicted, above which is a woman with a child in her arms and a wreath around her head, with doves flying around her. On the right and left of the pylon are two men with weeping dogs.

The four bound men at the front represent the misery of war. The two men on the sides of the pillar symbolize resistance; the left figure represents the resistance of intellectuals, the right figure that of the workers. The dogs next to these figures represent grief and loyalty. The female figure with the child and the doves symbolizes victory, peace, and new life. The ascending doves on the back of the column refer to liberation.

The Latin text on the front of the monument is by the classicist J.D. Meerwaldt (1888-1966):

"Hic ubi cor patriae monumentum cordibus intus
quod gestant cives spectet ad astra dei.

(Here, where the heart of the homeland is,
the monument that citizens carry within their hearts,
watches the stars of God.)"

Around the pylon is a curved memorial wall containing eleven urns with soil from execution and honorary burial sites from the then eleven provinces, and one urn with soil from the honorary fields in former Dutch East Indies. The text on this wall reads:

"Soil, consecrated by sacrifice, gathered from across the land, a sign for a distant time of memory and a strong bond."

On the inside of the memorial wall, there is a text by the Dutch poet Adriaan Roland Holst, with lettering designed by Jan van Krimpen:

"Never, from ore to eagle, was any creature free under the sun,
nor the sun itself, nor the stars.
But spirit broke law and established man on the struck breach.
From that first one descended the countless.

Dreading his high gaze
swarms within the law shrank back
and became nations and stood against one another for life,
under a night-clouded confused tragedy, called the world.

Since then no man was free but summoned from above his roof,
no nation but governed from above its towers.
Let this remain with us,
freed as we were from the reign of a nether world.
Not uncontrolled, but only controlled from above the world
remains freedom our share."

Wandeloverzicht