Noordermarkt

The square received the name Noordermarkt from Noorderkerk, whose walls it adjoins. Twice a week, market stalls fill the space around the church; by evening they are dismantled, and the church is visible in its entirety again. A bronze plaque with a detailed record of one evening in the square is mounted on the outer wall.

On Mondays and Saturdays, market stalls are set up around Noorderkerk. At first, city councilors called this square Prinsenmarkt—the market by Prinsengracht—but Amsterdam residents did not accept the official name. When Noorderkerk opened in sixteen twenty-three, the square came to be called Noordermarkt after it. Four years later, sellers of pots and old clothing were moved here. They laid out their goods beside the church cemetery. Today's markets continue the activity begun here almost four centuries ago.

The most important gathering at Noordermarkt took place on Monday, February twenty-fourth, nineteen forty-one. The day before, Willem Kraan, a bridge worker with the Municipal Department of Public Works, was near the Jewish quarter and witnessed a roundup. German police seized four hundred twenty-seven young Jewish men. They were taken to Buchenwald and Mauthausen; two survived the war.

Kraan told his comrade Piet Nak what he had seen. Nak swept streets for the Municipal Cleansing Department. Both belonged to the Communist Party of the Netherlands, which the occupiers had banned, and they sought to make municipal workers bring the city to a halt in protest against the roundup.

At first, the comrades hesitated. Kraan and Nak needed to make the call known to many workers at once, so they scheduled a public meeting at Noordermarkt. By six in the evening, about two hundred fifty people had gathered here—mainly employees of the Cleansing Department and Public Works. Nak climbed onto a cart and called on his colleagues not to come to work the next day. He risked his steady municipal wage and his freedom; the party was already operating underground, and the meeting was taking place in the middle of an open square.

During the night, party members printed leaflets with a threefold call: “Strike! Strike! Strike!” On the morning of February twenty-fifth, tram workers were the first to stop, followed by municipal-service workers. Factories, shipyards, shops, and offices joined them. The next day, the strike reached Haarlem, Zaandam, Hilversum, Weesp, and Utrecht.

German forces suppressed it within two days. Nine people died, twenty-four were seriously wounded, and hundreds of participants were arrested. Piet Nak was seized in the Municipal Cleansing Department building and beaten during interrogations. The occupiers did not realize that he was one of the organizers, and released him two weeks later. After further arrests, Nak went underground and survived the war. Willem Kraan continued the resistance. He was arrested in November nineteen forty-one and, a year later, shot along with thirty-two prisoners at Soesterberg airfield. He was thirty-three years old.

A bronze plaque is mounted on the outer wall of Noorderkerk. It bears the exact time of the gathering—six in the evening—and the number who gathered: two hundred fifty. The market stalls are removed after the trading day; the record of that Monday remains on the church.