In July 1942, the former Hollandsche Schouwburg (Dutch Theatre) in Plantage Middenlaan, Amsterdam, was taken into use as a holding and deportation centre (Umschlagplatz Plantage Middenlaan). Jews had to report there for deportation to Westerbork transit camp and later to the camp in Vught as well. Once the victims of persecution arrived there, they were registered, the keys to their homes were taken from them, and they waited – sometimes for one day, sometimes for several, and, in a few cases, for weeks. In October 1942, the Crèche (child care centre) opposite the Hollandsche Schouwburg was requisitioned as an extension of the Hollandsche Schouwburg. Jewish children up to the age of twelve were kept in the Crèche. There they waited, without their parents, for deportation. On deportation days, the children were escorted across the street so that they could leave with their parents.
Starting in January 1943, Walter Süskind, the Jewish caretaker of the Schouwburg, and Henriette Pimentel, the Jewish director of the Crèche, were in communication with resistance groups. With the parents' permission, resistance members brought children to safe places elsewhere in the country. Children were smuggled out of the Crèche in laundry baskets, rucksacks, or rubbish bins, rescued while out walking with the Jewish child care workers, sent through the adjacent garden of the Hervormde Kweekschool (Reformed Protestant Teacher Training College) led by Johan van Hulst, or rescued from the train. Almost six hundred Jewish children were saved thanks to cooperation between Jewish child care workers, Jewish Council staff members working in and around the Hollandsche Schouwburg and a number of resistance groups.
