Kinderen van Schattenberg
Koos Breukel is a portrait photographer. His work centres on the relationship between photographer and subject, with intimacy and proximity as its starting point. For What Knots Knot Knots he made Kinderen van Schattenberg, a series of portraits of people connected to the former Woonoord Schattenberg in Westerbork.
Koos Breukel, Kinderen van Schattenberg Bovensmilde, 2026
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the arrival of some 3,000 Moluccans, soldiers of the KNIL and their families, at Camp Westerbork. They had been told the stay would be temporary; the transit camp had by then been renamed Woonoord Schattenberg. The first Moluccans arrived in the Netherlands on 21 March 1951 and were discharged from military service upon arrival. A day later, several hundred of them reached Schattenberg. In total, around 13,000 Moluccans came to the Netherlands. A return to the Moluccas never materialised.
