Belgian refugees in the Netherlands during the First World War
These refugees were both civilians who were afraid of the war and the alleged atrocities of the Germans, and soldiers who either deserted or were cut off from their army unit.
When, on 10 October 1914, the city of Antwerp fell to the advancing German army, an estimated 40,000 soldiers and 1 million private citizens fled to the Netherlands.
Another estimate from E.H. Kossmann and H. Pirenne cites a figure of at least half a million refugees who left Antwerp, of whom hundreds of thousands went to the Netherlands.
According to Hague Convention of 1907, as a neutral land in a time of war the Netherlands was obliged to disarm and intern all military personnel fleeing across its borders.
At Groningen, 1,500 members of the Royal Naval Division were held in the camp they dubbed HMS Timbertown, a name inspired by the wooden huts where they were quartered.
Close to Amersfoort, Camp Zeist was constructed from wooden barracks on the orders of minister of war Nicolaas Bosboom.
The camp later went on to be used as the site of the Scottish Court in the Netherlands used to try those suspected of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21 December 1988.
On 11 November 1918 the war ended, but only once the Netherlands had signed the truce agreement could interned military personnel be released and allowed to return home.
After that, camps were opened at Ede, Amersfoort, Bergen op Zoom, Roosendaal, Tilburg, Hontenisse, Baarle-Nassau, Amsterdam, Scheveningen, Oldebroek and Veenhuizen.
In Gouda, refugees were first housed in private homes, but at the end of October 1914 they were concentrated in vacant greenhouses at the Steensma nursery.
In the camps refugees were separated into three categories according to their threat level: Partly due to the use of this classification, most of the civilians preferred to return to Belgium.
The British Society of Friends (Quakers) donated large amounts for the purchase of wood for the construction of the homes and other facilities.
