This article is more than 7 months old

This article is more than 7 months old

A Holocaust museum is to be built in Amsterdam after Germany offered a €4m (£3.4m) donation in memory of the 104,000 Dutch Jews murdered by the Nazis, amounting to three-quarters of the community, the highest death rate in Europe.

A temporary exhibition, held in a former religious seminary used during the war to smuggle hundreds of Jewish children to safety, will be closed in February to allow for two years of construction.

A second building on the other side of the Plantage Middenlaan, where Jews were rounded up for deportation, will also be developed to allow the new institution to offer educational programmes as well as the permanent exhibition.

Emile Schrijver, the director of Amsterdam’s Jewish Cultural Quarter, told the Het Parool newspaper: “The decision is made. We dare say this with this contribution: the National Holocaust Museum is coming.”

The museum’s management had requested a donation from the German government but were surprised by the result. “We thought there might be of a donation of half a million to €1m. A few weeks ago we received a message from Germany informing us that we would get €4m,” Schrijver said.

“Germany feels responsible for the history. The country has long been engaged in the conscientious processing of the past. With this contribution they take their responsibility and want to warn people. We are naturally delighted with this large amount, but the symbolism behind it is even more important than the money itself.”

An occupying regime led by the Austrian Nazi and lawyer Arthur Seyss-Inquart was imposed on the Netherlands after the German invasion in May 1940. It ruthlessly enforced Germany’s antisemitic laws with the help of collaborators, paying the Dutch state railway for deportations to Europe’s concentration camps.

This month is the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, where more than a million people died.

The gates of hell: Auschwitz 75 years on Read more

Germany’s foreign affairs minister, Heiko Maas, said the museum would mark the postwar reconciliation between the Netherlands and Germany.

He said: “In the Netherlands, the Nazi destruction machine worked in the most horrible way. The shared memory of this darkest chapter in our German history makes clear the importance of the achievements of European unification and the reconciliation between Germany and the Netherlands.

“The National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam places the right emphasis by encouraging young people to become acquainted with this subject, emphasising the importance of democracy and universal human rights.

“I am grateful for this contribution to the fight against antisemitism and I am pleased that we can support this important initiative with our contribution to the new Holocaust Museum.”

The museum still requires a further €6m to achieve its €27m target. “We still have many applications pending, including with the municipality of Amsterdam, foreign governments, provinces, lotteries and private sponsors,” Schrijver said.