Just to the left side of the Portuguese Synagogue complex is Jonas Daniël Meijerplein, where many Dutch Jews were herded together while awaiting deportation to concentration camps in Germany and Poland. The bronze figure is always surrounded by wreathes of flowers; it was created by Mari Andriessen and was erected in 1952 in commemoration of the February 1941 strike by workers protesting against the Jewish deportations, which was violently suppressed by Amsterdam’s Nazi occupiers and ended in a bloodbath.