Gedempte Gracht - Amalek monument

The Gedempte Gracht had been the thriving center of commerce for the Jewish neighborhood before the war. After the war, Levi Lassen, one of the survivors, was shocked to find this neighborhood suddenly empty. He decided to buy a number of the shops and devoted the rest of his life to creating a new shopping area, in memory of the Jewish people from The Hague who lost their lives. He died in  1962. Five years later, one of his wishes came true with the construction of a monument to remember the victims of the war – the Amalek Monument.
It is a David’s Star with four people on it. Three are most likely part of one family, with a fourth person at their feet. The text on the stone is a quotation from the Bible and says ‘Think about what Amalek did to you… And do not forget it.’ The Amalekites were a nation south of Palestine, and according to various Bible stories, they have always been the enemy of Israel. Amalek, one of the man, was ‘the first foe to attack the people of Israel after they had come out of Egypt as a free nation’ and thus became the arch-enemy in Jewish literature. This is what the text on the plaque refers to.

On Saturday afternoon, in spite of the cold weather, there are hundreds of people walking around the city center of The Hague. The Amalek Monument is attached to the back of C&A, but unfortunately barely differs in color from the wall. This might be one of the main reasons that none of the people we spoke to had ever seen this monument, let alone knew the meaning behind it. 
A woman that had been living in The Hague for twenty years felt almost embarrassed that she had never noticed this before. Most people could vaguely remember hearing the name Levi Lassen somewhere, but had absolutely no idea who he was. Even the shopkeepers right across the street of the monument could not exactly tell us what the monument was for, except that it was something Jewish.

The Hague has clearly tried to remember the horrors of the Second World War in the form of monuments, but apparently they are not known to the citizens. We wondered what the function of such a monument is, when nobody notices it or has the opportunity to find out what it is about on the spot. A little sign with the history of the neighborhood or the Gedempte Gracht would have been extremely helpful for most people. If the citizens of The Hague do not know about the existence of a monument like the Amalek stone, then what exactly are we remembering? Is a hidden monument that nobody knows the meaning of, better than no monument at all? 

Further reading:
http://www.levilassen.nl/over-de-stichting/oprichting-stichting/ (Dutch)