World War II in 100 photos

This page provides a summary of the search for the 100 most appealing photos of World War II. Photos were submitted, chosen and presented via this website. The rest of the site is in Dutch, hopefully this summary clarifies it enough.

Last year, 75 years after the liberation of the Netherlands, a request went out to people nationwide to submit their most appealing photos from the Second World War. The search started in the provinces, where citizens as well as institutions like museums and archives could submit photos online. After the first selection, everyone could vote for their favorite photos via this site. The 50 most powerful photos for each province were presented online. You can view the choices for each province via this overview page.

Two months later, a national jury consisting of experts and citizens chose the 100 most appealing photos, which together show a visual war history of the Netherlands. You can view the national selection of 100 photos here. The selection was presented online right after it was revealed by the biggest Dutch news channel. You can watch the broadcast here.

Due to all the Covid measures, a planned traveling exhibition initially could not take place. For that reason, we asked well-known Dutch people, and later on the entire Dutch population, which of the 100 photos they liked best and why. We showed the self-recorded videos on social media, using #mijnkeuzeuit100 (which means #mychoiceoutof100). And we also presented quite some videos on the site (see view my photo). Fortunately, six months later, the 100 photos could be exhibited in the Resistance Museum in Amsterdam, later in the Dutch parliament and a little later in the National Archive of the Netherlands Antilles (in Willemstad, Curaçao).

The search resulted in the discovery of several previously unseen images of the Second World War, such as the photo of the deportation of Jewish women and children in Zwolle, see photo. Never before had photos of deportations in villages and towns outside Amsterdam been found.

All 100 photos are now also bundled in a book, of which a third edition was recently released. The nationwide search gained quite some press coverage online, on radio, television and in print. View some of the press coverage here.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Any questions can be send to info@blackmagicmarker.nl