Please Continue...

In Please Continue… Conversations with Holocaust Witnesses, an exhibition made jointly with USC Shoah Foundation, we meet twelve Holocaust survivors from various European countries. Their stories show how the Holocaust unfolded in different ways in the Netherlands and other parts of the continent. The exhibition enables visitors to engage in a virtual conversation with two of the survivors. It is the first time in the Netherlands that interactive technology allows us to ask Holocaust survivors questions.

The National Holocaust Museum tells the story of the persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands. In the temporary exhibition entitled Please Continue… we get to meet twelve people who survived the Holocaust in different parts of Europe. Eleven are Jewish, one is Romani. Their testimonies, recorded on film, show how the Nazi persecution developed in different ways from place to place.

Personal stories

An ever-smaller group of survivors continues to tell what was done to them. Sharing their memories makes the Shoah tangible for us. Before too long, however, there will be no living witnesses left. In 1994, America’s USC Shoah Foundation realised that this would make it harder to inform and educate about the Holocaust. So they created a Visual History Archive: a repository of around 60,000 filmed testimonies by Holocaust survivors and by survivors of other instances of mass violence around the world.

Interactive witness: Dimensions in Testimony

Two of the twelve witnesses in Please Continue... appear on a life-size screen as if sitting opposite us. You can ask them questions about their experiences during the Holocaust, and they reply. These are Dimensions in Testimony, developed by the USC Shoah Foundation.

Visual History Archive open to the public

The entire USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive can be accessed at the knowledge resource centre at Hollandsche Schouwburg by appointment. This is the only place in Benelux where it is openly available. It contains 59,702 filmed testimonies, recorded in 69 countries in 44 languages. Many recordings have been transcribed or subtitled in English. The archive also holds over two million names, 789,671 photos and images and over 71,000 terms to access the narratives.

Please Continue... In Conversation with Holocaust Witnesses will be on view from November 14, 2025, until November 8, 2026, in the Bram and Elly Hertzberger Room at the National Holocaust Museum.