Interview: Hiding in the Wolf's Lair

For the last 12 months we, in collaboration with our good friends at Nomad Tinker House, have been working on an artwork for Amsterdam Light Festival #8. Our artwork Hiding in the Wolf’s Lair is located at the rear of Amsterdam Artis Zoo on the Plantage Muidergracht. The theme for this year’s festival is 'Disrupt', so our piece is based on what we believe to be the most disruptive event in Amsterdam's history, the Second World War. During the occupation, around 250-300 people hid in Amsterdam Artis Zoo to escape from Nazi persecution. Among them were Jews, resistance fighters, young men who didn't want to get sent to forced labour camps in Germany, and even entire families. Since audio is a terrible medium to explain a light art installation, in this episode we dive into the story of Amsterdam's zoo during the Second World War and the people who managed to survive by hiding there. To guide us through this story, we interviewed the former director of Artis, Maarten Frankenhuis, who wrote Overleven in de Dierentuin (Surviving in the Zoo), the definitive account of Artis zoo during the war.