The first edition of this standard work on the Hollandsche Schouwburg was published in Dutch by Amsterdam University Press in 2013. It anticipated a need for information among the general public and quickly sold out. The need for this fully revised version, intended for an international audience, which includes the most recent insights, was just as great. I am pleased that this gap in the literature on the persecution and murder of 102,000 Dutch Jews has now been filled, thanks to the editorial team of Professor Frank van Vree, Dr David Duindam, and Hetty Berg. This is the first publication in English to be fully dedicated to this unique historical site in Amsterdam.

The Hollandsche Schouwburg is unique for various reasons. Nowhere else in Europe has another site of deportation in a large city been preserved in such good condition. In addition, its future has been assured by the Hollandsche Schouwburg Foundation, which supervises the site's use as a war monument, and by the connection with the Jewish Historical Museum, which has been responsible for its daily management for a number of decades. The Hollandsche Schouwburg is visited by an ever-growing number of visitors, many tens of thousands each year, who want to remember their family members, fellow believers or compatriots, or who are seeking signs of and information about the Holocaust in the Dutch context.

Since May 2016, this informative role has been shared with the National Holocaust Museum that is being founded; it is the final component in the Jewish Cultural Quarter, which also includes the Jewish Historical Museum, the JHM Children's Museum, and the majestic seventeenth-century Portuguese Synagogue. The National Holocaust Museum is being established in the former Reformed Teacher Training College, which played a role in the rescue of hundreds of children from the crèche that lay opposite of the Hollandsche Schouwburg. In a few years, the Hollandsche Schouwburg, as a site of deportation, and the former Reformed Teacher Training College, as a historical rescue site and the first and only museum in the Netherlands to be completely dedicated to commemorating the murder of the Dutch Jews, will together form the National Holocaust Museum. We believe that this will make an important contribution to the Dutch museum landscape, to the commemoration of the persecution in the Netherlands, to the provision of reliable information, and to countering growing indifference in society.