Holocaust Memorial of Names pays tribute to every victim: Rutte

King Willem-Alexander unveiled the Holocaust Memorial of Names in Amsterdam on Sunday afternoon. More than 75 years after the end of the Second World War, the names, dates of birth and ages at death of the more than 102 thousand Dutch victims of the Holocaust, including Jews, as well as, Sinti and Roma can be found there.

Caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte saw the monument as a tribute to every victim personally, “with every name as a monument itself, a memorial for every individual, for every life story.”

“This monument says 102,163 times: No, we will not forget you. No, we will not allow your name to be erased. No, evil does not have the last word,” Rutte said at the unveiling of the monument on Sunday. In our time, anti-Semitism is never far away, according to Rutte. “This monument screams: stay vigilant,” the Prime Minister said.

Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema stated that during and after the German occupation Amsterdam had “seriously failed” in the protection and treatment of “our Jewish inhabitants”.

“As we all know, 140 thousand Jews lived in the Netherlands at the beginning of the occupation. 80 thousand of them lived in Amsterdam. Only 15 thousand survived the Shoah: 65 thousand Amsterdam Jews never returned," the mayor said.

The Memorial of Names is located on the Weesperstraat in the former Jewish quarter and was designed by the Polish-Jewish-American architect Daniel Libeskind. The monument, which cost 15 million euros, was made possible in part by allowing people to adopt stones that are part of the piece. Anyone can adopt a stone for 50 euros. So far, between 70 to 80 thousand stones have been adopted with requests still incoming.