It counted the number of Jewish homes across the city.
It was called the Stippenkaart.
Each dot counted 10 Jewish citizens.
In blue ink, the mapmaker wrote the number of Jewish residents. In red ink, non-Jews.
Civic efficiency was weaponized.
Collaborators mapped out the Jewish community.
The center of Jewish city life was in the Jodenbuurt.
The Portuguese and Great Synagogues stood at its heart.
Jewish street vendors at Waterlooplein, Nieuwmarkt, and Uilenburgerstraat were a mainstay of life in Amsterdam.
In the Transvaalbuurt, four in five residents were Jewish.
Middle-class refugees, like the Franks, settled in the newer Rivierenbuurt.
In February 1941, the occupiers cordoned off the Jodenbuurt to isolate the population for the first mass arrests.
Jewish property, businesses, homes, and community life were systematically dismantled.
After Jewish families were deported, their empty houses were eventually demolished.
The May 1941 Stippenkaart counted 89,343 Jewish residents.
By 1945, only 15,000 remained.
In memory of those who lost their lives.
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Stippenkaart – Amsterdam, May 1941
In May 1941, the Amsterdam Bureau of Statistics produced a map of the city's Jewish residents. Each dot represented ten people. This project reinterprets the original map as a memorial, where each light symbolizes one person's soul. My hope is that the project restores what the original map erased. Where human lives were reduced to data points, here they are given individuality.
To build this map, I took the population numbers recorded by the original mapmaker and matched them to each neighborhood's outline, traced by hand from the original stippenkaart. The lights were placed over buildings according to the population in each neighborhood. The original pre-war buildings were reconstructed using AI-assisted map analysis and then substantially redrawn by hand. The demolished buildings shown are those that were present in Jewish neighborhoods in 1941 and were subsequently demolished. They do not necessarily represent only Jewish homes. Modern features like the IJ Tunnel and A10 ring road were removed so the map reflects the city approximately as it was in 1941. I gave the memorial a high-fidelity rendering on desktop, with one light for every person, 3D building models, and topographic relief. The experience was simplified for mobile, with the original map ratio of one light per ten people, a 2D mesh instead of a 3D city scene, and lower-fidelity graphics.
The stippenkaart has stuck with me since I first came across it. When digitizing old maps, I often find myself drawn in by the subtle defects: rips in the paper, typos, squiggles in hand-drawn lines. I picture the person who drew it, at a drafting table, generations ago, doing the same work I do now. I've worked with a lot of maps, and few are as poignant as this one. It makes me think about the ethics of ordinary work, about how a map chooses to portray people, and how much power is in that choice.