Plaquette 7 mei 1945
At Amsterdam’s Dam Square, Plaquette 7 mei 1945 is a memorial plaque on the Groote Club façade. The building stands at the corner of Dam Square and Kalverstraat, beside the Royal Palace and Paleisstraat. Its setting places wartime remembrance among the busy streets and open space of central Amsterdam.
In May 1945, German Kriegsmarine soldiers inside the building fired machine guns into a crowd celebrating the expected liberation. Shooting continued intermittently for about two hours, while resistance fighters, Scouts, Red Cross members, and nurses helped nearby. At least 32 civilians died, and between 100 and 120 people were wounded. The plaque was installed in 1947, two years after the violence, to honour those civilians.
A further memorial appeared in 2016, embedding victims’ names as stone reliefs within the paving of Dam Square. During the shooting, people sought cover behind streetlights, a small truck, and a barrel organ called ‘t Snotneusje.
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Image: Gert Jan van RooijCC BY-SA 4.0 
Image: JahoePublic domain 
Image: Krijn Taconis (1918-1979)Public domain 
Image: Willem van de Poll / AnefoCC0 
Image: Wiel van der RandenPublic domain
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