Dutch Rabbi Objects to Nazis in Monument
Image by getty images
A Dutch rabbi has demanded that the names of his relatives be removed from a monument which commemorates Jewish Holocaust victims along with German soldiers who died in World War II.
“I don’t want my family members’ names to appear next to the names of German murderers,” Rabbi Wim van Dijk said in a filmed interview concerning the unveiling of the monument, planned for Oct. 20 in Geffen in the eastern Netherlands.
Onno Hoes, chairman of the Hague-based Center for Information and Documentation on Israel – a local watchdog on anti-Semitism – asked the municipality to hold off on unveiling the monument, which he defined as a potentially “dangerous precedent.” It could help “the falsification of history and the blurring of borders between victims and perpetrators,” he said.
Leaders of the Dutch Jewish community arrived on Oct. 18 in Geffen for talks with the mayor, who said he had “underestimated” the issue’s sensitivity. The Central Jewish Board, an umbrella representative, also spoke out against the monument.
Following a public outcry, the national commemoration committee of the Netherlands scrapped a poem from its main annual ceremony in May, which seemed to suggest Nazis deserved to be commemorated along with their victims.
The homage to Dutch Nazis who died in World War II was to be paid in a poem written by the 15-year-old relative of a Dutch SS soldier who died on Germany’s Eastern Front. The Nationaal Comite 4 en 5 Mei had planned to have him read the poem aloud at the main official commemoration ceremony in Amsterdam.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
