Some 16,000 attended national WWII commemoration; 6 arrested
The Netherlands commemorated the victims of World War II and other armed conflicts in which the Netherlands was involved with two minutes of silence at 8 p.m. Sunday. Dam Square was packed, with some 16,000 people attending the National Commemoration in Amsterdam. The police arrested six people around this ceremony, NOS reported.
The National Commemoration took place without major incidents. Shortly after the silence, two people were arrested for shouting “Free Palestine.” The other four were arrested for disrupting the commemoration, drunkenness, and because of a restraining order.
The two minutes of silence were observed throughout the Netherlands. People stopped their cars, trains came to a standstill, and there were no takeoffs or landings at Schiphol. There were public commemorations at at least 480 locations, including a larger-than-expected one in The Hague that also focused on the victims in Gaza.
The commemorations were for the over 102,000 Jews, Roma, and Sinti from the Netherlands killed between 1940 and 1945, resistance fighters, soldiers, and civilians from Asia to Europe, as well as people who died in Dutch peace operations after the Second World War.
On Dam Square in Amsterdam, Prime Minister Dick Schoof spoke about his grandfather, who was executed during the war for being part of the resistance. The prime minister said he admired that generation, who, despite all the “destruction and dehumanization,” were able “to see others as people, like themselves.”
“It wasn’t as easy as that sounds during the war years. Unfortunately, we know that it’s not easy today either. In a world full of war, people lose sight of each other, they lose compassion.” That’s happening right now in the Netherlands, he said. “In the darkest moments, we hear an echo from the past. And during the two minutes of silence, that echo sounds extra loud.”
According to ANP, someone in the crowd shouted “blood on your hands” shortly after Schoof ended his speech. Dozens of people also turned their backs on the prime minister when he spoke, the news wire wrote.
The same thing happened when PVV parliamentarian Martin Bosma laid a wreath. An activist had urged attendees to do so before the commemoration, saying that the commemoration of the dead should not be hijacked “by the extreme right that is complicit in the genocide in Gaza.”
Some 3,000 people attended an alternative commemoration on the Malieveld in The Hague, while the organizers expected around 500 attendees. This commemoration focused on the victims of WWII and the Holocaust, as well as the Palestinians killed in Gaza. The organizers felt it was right to link the two genocides, saying that the Netherlands is complicit in the war there by supplying weapons to Israel.
Earlier in the day, Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema spoke at a silent march through the city. She urged Netherlands residents not to look the other way when it comes to the currently raging wars. “‘Never again’ is not a political slogan that sometimes applies and sometimes not, for some people it does, for some people it doesn’t,” she said. “Mothers and children die from bombings that maim others for life and traumatize families, people go hungry, and cities and villages are turned into ruins. And we are watching.”
