Commemoration of February strike from 1941 against the persecution of Jews during WWII

In Amsterdam, the February strike will be commemorated on the Jonas Daniël Meijerplein on Saturday afternoon at 4:45 p.m. FNV chairman Tuur Elzinga and the chairman of the Committee for the Remembrance of the February Strike 1941, Jaïr Stranders, will speak. The singer Lucky Fonz III will sing a song. A wreath will also be laid at the statue of De Dokwerker in the square.

"An absolute must," Elzinga called the commemoration of the February strike. "We can take an example from this in today's time of increasing polarization and intolerance. We are again increasingly confronted with anti-Semitism and dangerous conspiracy theories. We must continue to warn against this."

The February strike began in Amsterdam on Feb. 25, 1941, as a protest against Nazi persecution of Jews during the Second World War. The strike was prompted by the first raids in the capital, in which nearly 400 Jewish men were arrested and deported. Work was suspended in the shipyards, municipal services, metal plants, and HEMA and Bijenkorf stores.

The resistance action also spread to Zaanstreek, Haarlem, Velsen, Utrecht, Hilversum, and Weesp. After a few days, the German occupiers ended the resistance action. The strikers were imprisoned and nine of them eventually died at the hands of the Germans.

Items from the time of the strike are on display at the Resistance Museum until March 23. Among other items, the museum is displaying a handwritten strike report for the Dutch government in London. Also on display is a suicide note from an artist who was arrested for calling a strike. He was executed on the Waalsdorpervlakte along with 17 other resistance fighters. The poet Jan Campert wrote the famous resistance poem about them: The song of the eighteen dead.