The statue of a portly dockworker located next to the Portuguese Synagogue was unveiled by Queen Juliana of Netherlands in 1952 as a tribute to the brave population of Amsterdam that participated in a general strike on February 25, 1941. The strike, which paralysed the city, was organised in response to the anti-Semitic policies of the Nazi occupation forces that began sending Jews to the concentration camp at Mauthausen. The strike was eventually quashed by the Germans, but it sent a powerful message to the Nazis that the Dutch weren’t ready to give up their sovereignty, nor their tolerant beliefs.
