Rabbijn Maarsenplein - Children's monument

Long ago, this street was called the Bezemstraat and home to a primary school which many Jewish children attended. During 1942 and 1943, the classrooms became more and more empty. More than 1700 of the children were taken from The Hague and never returned, and that is why this monument was designed and presented, in 2006. It symbolizes stacked chairs, the chairs from the children that disappeared from the classrooms. At the same time the chairs look like ladders, and thus can be seen as a ‘stairway to heaven’ which is where those children are now. It was meant to function as a place for kids to play, so that it forms a bridge between past and present, while remembering people to respect each other’s culture. The names of the children and their age when they passed away are inscribed in the monument. The ring around it says: ‘Disappeared is the Jewish Neighborhood, disappeared are the children. Taken away and murdered in the Second World War. Because they were Jewish. 1700 Jewish children from The Hague did not return. Many of them played here. Went to school here. Let us not forget them and make sure this never happens again.’ 

When you walk across the Rabbijn Maarsenplein on a cold Saturday morning in December, you’ll be amazed by the amount of people who walk across the square without knowing anything about the history of it. People carelessly sit on the Children’s monument, and have no idea how symbolic those six chairs are. 
However, when you ask people who pass by what they know about the neighborhood and the monument, lots of different stories come to the surface. A young couple that lives right across the street from the square told us that they knew the stories that one of their grandmothers told them. They rightly stated that the neighborhood had been really poor, except for a few exceptions on one of the canals. 

As we were evaluating some of the earlier answers, a man walked around the monument and read the text on the outer ring. I walked up to him to ask what he knew about it, to which he replied that he had lived here for a long time but only recently saw a documentary that covered the neighborhood, which we will refer to later. He became curious and decided to come take a look, he himself was fairly surprised that he had never noticed the Children’s monument before. He was under the impression that many people didn't know anything about its existence, not even the inhabitants of the neighborhood.
Another man we spoke to knew of the monument and its religious background, but did not know that it was about the children from The Hague. He had no idea about the history of the neighborhood, and told us he had always wondered why this monument was built right at this spot. After we explained him what had once been the function of this square, he genuinely thanked us and hoped that the city of The Hague would do a bit more to preserve this part of its history. 

The second monument on this square is a replica of the plaque 'Rachel Weeps', a memorial for the deceased Jewish children from high schools in The Hague. Unfortunately, nobody we asked had ever noticed this memorial. It is not big, but certainly more can be done to make it clear what it is for. Especially for this plaque, no information is available. Nobody knows what it is for, and that's a shame.
As it got later, this seemed to be the general opinion of everyone we questioned. Why are all the monuments so subtle and so hidden? Especially the younger people who had only been living in the neighborhood for a couple of years were surprised about  the limited amount of information made available by the municipality. It is important for any city to cherish all the different aspects, especially for a city like The Hague that has now gained a reputation as city of peace and justice.

Further reading:
http://www.joodskindermonument.nl/index.html (Dutch)
http://www.jhm.nl/culture-and-history/the-netherlands/zuid-holland/den-haag (English)