SS Soldiers’ Names To Be Removed From Monument For Dutch Holocaust Victims
Leidschendam, The Netherlands. Image by Wikimedia
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — City officials from a Dutch municipality near The Hague said they would remove the names of three SS soldiers from its monument for Jewish Holocaust victims.
The inclusion of the German soldiers’ names was discovered through research by the local Historical Association of Leidschendam-Voorburg, the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper reported Wednesday.
The monument, which also includes the name of a local criminal, was unveiled 10 years ago and contains approximately 400 names of Holocaust victims and resistance fighters. Hubert Berkhout, a researcher for the Dutch Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, told the daily that he has never encountered the inclusion of Nazis in recently constructed monuments.
“It occurs in monuments set up shortly after the war when there was not so much information,” he said.
Dutch Jewish groups have protested what they described as an emerging trend of commemorations extended not only to Holocaust victims and Allied forces’ casualties, but also to German soldiers. Organizers of such events have justified them as promoting reconciliation.
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