WWII victims in former Dutch East Indies commemorated in Netherlands today

The Netherlands is commemorating the Second World War victims in the former Dutch East Indies in various ceremonies across the Netherlands today. A few hundred people attended ceremonies in Amsterdam and Rotterdam this morning. The national commemoration is happening in The Hague this evening. Prime Minister Mark Rutte will attend that ceremony.

For the mainland Netherlands, the Second World War ended with its liberation on 5 May 1945, but the war still raged in the former Dutch East Indies for months after that. WWII ended in what is Indonesia today on 15 August 1945, when the United States forced Japan, an ally of Nazi Germany during WWII that occupied the Dutch East Indies in 1942, to capitulate with two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Indonesia declared its independence shortly after Japan’s withdrawal, but the Netherlands only gave up the colony in 1949 under international pressure after years of bloody war.

About a hundred people attended the commemoration by Stichting Indisch Platform 2.0 on Dam Square in Amsterdam on Tuesday morning, according to ANP. Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema did not attend to protest against one of the speakers. The standard on which Halsema would have laid a wreath remained empty, chairman Peggy Stein of the organizing committee said. “The municipality has canceled this wreath-laying,” she said during the commemoration. “But we’d love to invite the municipality again next year to show that we are inclusive.”

Several hundred people gathered on the Boompjes for the commemoration in Rotterdam on Tuesday morning. Deputy Mayor Vincent Karremans and presenter Jet Sol spoke at the ceremony. Afterward, the memorial festival Floating Pasar started in the Leuvehaven near the Maritime Museum.

The number of local commemorations increases every year, Joh Sijmonsbergen, vice chairman of the Nationale Herdenking 15 augustus 1945, told NOS. “Every year, one or two are added. We are now over 50 in total.”

According to Sijmonsbergen, this is due to the second generation taking a lot of initiative. “They are getting along in life, are retiring, and have more time.” But the third and fourth generations are also increasingly involved in committees that organize commemorations, he added. There are many young people on the committees organizing the commemorations in Nijmegen, Dordrecht, and Rotterdam, among others.