Prime Minister Mark Rutte will speak at Holocaust commemoration

Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema will be one of the speakers at the annual national Holocaust commemoration. It will take place this Sunday at the Spiegelmonument "Never Again Auschwitz" in Amsterdam's Wertheim Park. Together with State Secretary Maarten van Ooijen, Rutte will lay a wreath at the memorial.

Other speakers include survivor Joop van der Starre, Boaz Blokhuis on behalf of the younger generation and Jacques Grishaver, chairman of the Dutch Auschwitz Committee. The commemoration will begin at 10:55 a.m. with a silent march from Amsterdam City Hall to Wertheim Park, where the ceremony will begin at 11:30 a.m. NOS will provide live television coverage of the commemoration, which always takes place on the last Sunday in January, beginning at 11 a.m.

After two years of coronavirus measures, the public can participate in the commemoration again this year. According to NOS, the National Holocaust Memorial organization calls on people to come en masse to take a stand against anti-Semitism. This week marks the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp, the international symbol of the Holocaust.