WWII memorial sites increasingly facing anti-Semitism, violence, threats
Over 80 years after the Second World War, memorial sites in the Netherlands and abroad are increasingly facing anti-Semitism, violence, and threats. Earlier today, on WWII Remembrance Day, the National Monument in Amsterdam was vandalized. People involved with memorial management and the Jewish community blame the hardening of public debate and the rise of anti-democratic parties, NU.nl reports.
Almost daily, WWII memorial sites in Europe file reports of criminal offenses, including threats against staff, harassment, intimidation, and in some cases, even physical violence. Chairwoman Christine Gispen-de Wied of the Sobibor Foundation and director Piotr Gywinski of the former Auschwitz concentration camp recognize this trend. “This is happening all over Europe, Cywinski told the newspaper. “In Auschwitz, too.”
The incidents at memorial sites are part of a broader increase in anti-Semitism. In recent years, the number of anti-Semitic incidents in the Netherlands has increased steadily. While only 0.3 percent of the Dutch population is Jewish, anti-Semitism accounts for over a quarter of registered discrimination incidents, the National Coordinator for Combating Antisemitism recently reported.
Some experts blame the rise in anti-Semitism on Israel itself. This week, a group of British rabbis warned in The Guardian that the Israeli government’s current course poses an “existential threat” to Judaism.
Omer Bartov, a leading Jewish professor who states in his new book that Israel uses accusations of anti-Semitism to suppress others, published an argument in the same newspaper saying that Israel is “weaponising” anti-Semitism as a “tool to shut people up.”
Cywinski shares this criticism of the Israeli and American policies, for example, in the Gaza Strip, he told NU.nl. “Every time Donald Trump talks about building a Riviera in Gaza, I feel that anti-Semitism worldwide increases by another 1 percent.”
But he appeals to people to try to detach this criticism from the past. “Because the Holocaust is not a Jewish or Israeli problem,” Cywinksy said. “The Holocaust is a European problem. Jews were the victims. The problem lies with the perpetrators and those who did nothing to help.”
Gispen-de Wied of the Sobibor Foundation added that anti-democratic parties also share the blame for rising anti-Semitism. They are gaining a foothold in European politics and hardening the public debate, and this is not isolated to anti-Semitism, she said. “The same applies to the entire campaign against asylum seekers. I see that in a larger context of increasing right-wing shift, polarization, and individualism.”
Cywinski agrees, adding that radical right-wing parties “play with history” to gain new voters. “Misusing history to stir up a sense of pride,” he said. Memorial sites are not about pride, Cywinsky stressed. “They must confront us with what was terrible, wrong, and inhumane about our history. There are a multitude of aspects connected to history. Politicians do not like that, because it is difficult to appeal to voters with what went wrong in the past.”
