Commemorating reminds us peace is fragile: Parliamentary president

By continuing to commemorate, we realize that peace is fragile and freedom can never be taken for granted. That said Tweede Kamer president Vera Bergkamp on Wednesday in her commemorative speech at the Honor Roll of the Fallen in the hall of the Tweede Kamer building.

In her speech, the Dutch parliament president referred to the speech that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made in the Tweede Kamer via a video link last month. He warned that the reports about the war in his country could come to feel routine for people in the Netherlands. "While the suffering continues," Bergkamp said.

Bergkamp drew a comparison with statements by famous Auschwitz survivor Ellie Wiesel. He "wondered, in his darkest days in Auschwitz, why the world remained so quiet." After the war, Wiesel called indifference the opposite of peace. "The more we relativize, downplay, deny, or even forget the Holocaust and its suffering, he said, the greater the chance that it will happen again," Bergkamp said.

Bergkamp also told the story of the Utrecht resistance fighter Truus van Lier. After several acts of resistance, Van Lier was arrested and executed in Sachsenhausen. The Tweede Kamer president quoted her story to demonstrate the "rich diversity of resistance fighters." "Not only the tough, masculine resistance hero still determines the image, but also increasingly the fearless resistance woman."

This year, the commemoration at the Honor Roll of the Fallen was held for the first time in the temporary Tweede Kamer building. The Roll of Honor has been given a place in the central hall of the building. It contains the names of about 18,000 soldiers and resistance fighters who died during the Second World War.