Jewish Monument

Although Wageningen, the town in which the Germans signed the capitulation documents with the Allied forces on the 6th of May 1945, the inhabitants never thought of erecting a statue for those Jewish inhabitants lost in the Shoah. This is the sentence someone can read in a folder from December 1997 in which the "Stichting Joods Gedenkteken Wageningen en omstreken", named in English "Foundation Jewish Monument Wageningen and neighbouring communities", presented itself.

The objective of the folder was to collect money for such a monument. The monument should not only be erected for the never returned Jews from Wageningen, but also for them from Ede-Bennekom, Renkum, Rhenen and Zetten. For centuries the Jews in these towns and villages did belong to the Jewish community of Wageningen.

The Foundation contacted the mayor of Wageningen and asked for a positive attitude towards the idea of a monument by the magistrate and further discussed with him a future place to erect this monument. The Foundation preferred a site opposite the place of the former synagogue, which was destroyed in the beginning of the war and of which the ruins were removed after the war.

In 1999 the municipality gave the green light to erect a future monument on the favoured spot.
The fundraising went very well. Associations and companies in Wageningen, the municipality it self and a lot of inhabitants donated money for this monument. In November 1999 the Foundation could give the artist Yetty Elzas the assignment to realise her design "The gate of life", in bronze.
The 4th of May 2000 accompanied by a large crowd, the unveiling of the monument took place by the mayor J.F. Sala and Rabbi J.S. Jacobs, preceded by an impressive service in the Reformed church in Wageningen

The mayor and the rabby inserted a container in the foot of the monument with a list of persons who were deported to the concentration camps, during the Shoah and did not return. The list was accompanied by the text from Ruth (10:4) "that the name of the dead be not cut of from among his brethren, and from the gate of this place" (Translation from the King James Bible). This text is also engraved in the foot of the monument.