“The Forgotten Genocide” Digital Exhibition Premieres Online

On 3 May 2012 the digital exhibition "The Forgotten Genocide" from the National Committee for 4 and 5 May in the Netherlands will go live online.

The website deals with the persecution of Roma and Sinti during the Nazi period. The exhibition can soon be found on: http://romasinti.eu/.



About Tweedewereldoorlog.nl:

Tweedewereldoorlog.nl is a web guide produced by the National Committee for 4 and 5 May (NC) and 20 other partner organizations including the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and Kamp Westerbork.  Not all the information one finds on the Internet is complete or historically accurate, for example, and finely honed searching skills are sometimes required in order to find the information one is looking for.  The web guide is designed to help generally interested Internet users find reliable information within the enormous and continually expanding amount of data that is currently available on the Internet.

On the basis of twelve themes and dozens of underlying subjects, the web guide tells the story of the Second World War. Visitors can choose from among different links and surf further to websites that contain more detailed information. There is also an extensive selection of sources that will enable further searching in photograph and film collections, diaries, or museums, for example. The web guide also serves as a good starting point for pupils in their search for information about specific topics relating to the Second World War.



To present the huge variety of material and to generate more attention for certain less familiar themes, digital exhibitions are developed for the web guide on a regular basis. Four such exhibitions are already online: "De Eerste 5 Dagen" ("The First 5 Days" - about the liberation), "Achter de Feestvreugde" ("Behind the Revelry" - about the liberation), "Erfgoed van de Oorlog" ("Legacy of the War" - about the results of the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport's programme of the same name) and "De Verplichte Vaart" ("Shipping under Compulsion" - about the Dutch merchant navy during the war).

Since its launch in March 2009, the website has had hundreds of thousands of visitors. It has also been nominated for numerous awards and received honourable mentions and positive reviews (from the Webby Awards, the 'Geschiedenis Online' Prize, and the Historisch Nieuwsblad, among others). In the coming years, the NC and its partners hope to further expand the web guide's functionalities and audience.