This study describes the history of the care of the mentally handicapped in the Netherlands between 1945 and 2000. The central theme is the development of a separate care system for this group of citizens. At present the care of the handicapped has grown into an externally isolated and internally differentiated care system. The system is described as the body of people, means and efforts that meets the needs, specific for people with a mental handicap and their surrounding environments. In 2000, in this system about 90,000 workers supply care to approximately 120,000 people, defined as mentally handicapped. The care system includes a large number of specialized institutions, with an annual overall budget of approximately 6.7 billion Dutch guilders. As a result of this system many mentally handicapped lead “a life in apartheid”. This means that they only associate with their own kind and live, work and recreate in separate facilities, that seem to be apart from society. To find the causes of the development of this “apartheid system” is the leitmotiv in this story. The question was: “How and influenced by what factors (for instance social developments, events, individuals) did a separate system of care of the mentally handicapped develop in the Netherlands after 1945?