Around 2,500 women were held in the Scheveningen prison known as the Oranjehotel during the Second World War. While accounts of male prisoners are widely known, the stories of female detainees have surfaced largely through needlework preserved across eight decades.
The former prison, now a museum, holds more than twenty embroidered pieces made by female prisoners. New works continue to surface each year as families and descendants donate them to the collection.
Daily life documented in thread
Embroidery was permitted by prison authorities, and several women used it to record their conditions. Elisabeth Boon Mees, known as Bep, stitched her plate, cup, cutlery, and the clothesline hanging in cell 381 onto fabric.
Other prisoners used needle and thread to smuggle unauthorized information out of the facility. The Hague resistance fighter Greet Ziegler, who was permitted to move between cells, gathered names and arrest dates of fellow inmates on a handkerchief.
Ziegler’s handkerchief also featured lines from the Dutch national anthem, an addition historian Adriënne Baars describes as a declaration of the prisoners’ innocence. Ziegler managed to smuggle the cloth outside upon her release.
Humour alongside hardship
Some detainees turned to dark humour to cope with detention. The Hague resistance worker Titia Gorter made several embroideries recording her time inside, referring to a month in prison as a month in a boarding house.
Gorter embroidered the cell toilet bucket, labelling it as a perfume bottle, and referred to her prison uniform as lingerie. She did not survive the war, later dying in Ravensbrück concentration camp.
