Het Oranjehotel Een Duitse gevangenis in Scheveningen
What did it mean to be imprisoned in occupied Holland? Bas von Benda-Beckmann has investigated the history of the main German prison on Dutch soil. Shortly after May 1940, the Nazis requisitioned part of the Scheveningen prison complex and established a Polizeigefängnis, which became known as the Oranjehotel. Between 1940 and 1945, more than 25,000 people were imprisoned here during police investigations, awaiting trial, sentencing, or deportation to a concentration camp. The prison population consisted of resistance fighters, as well as thieves, black-marketeers, Jews, and Jehovah's Witnesses.
Von Benda-Beckmann consulted German prison records, interviews, diaries, letters, memoirs, and criminal files to study daily life of the prisoners, guards, and other people involved. He proves that their backgrounds were much more diverse than is often assumed.
Bas von Benda-Beckmann