The Netherlands on Sunday opened a National Holocaust Museum with a ceremony presided over by the Dutch king and Israeli President Isaac Herzog, whose presence prompted protests because of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
The museum in Amsterdam tells the stories of some of the 102,000 Jews who were deported from the Netherlands and murdered in Nazi camps, as well as the history of their structural persecution under German World War II occupation before the deportations began.
The museum “gives a face and a voice to the Jewish victims of persecution in the Netherlands,” Dutch King Willem-Alexander said in an address at the inaugural ceremony on Sunday.
Photo: Reuters
It also “shows us the devastating consequences that anti-Semitism can have,” he said.
“That is why we must continue to be aware of how things began and how they went from bad to worse,” he added.
Earlier, the king and the Israeli president visited Amsterdam’s famous Portuguese Synagogue.
Herzog hailed the Netherlands’ initiative to create a new Holocaust museum amid what he said was raising anti-Semitism around the world.
“At this pivotal moment in time, this institution sends a clear powerful statement,” Herzog said. “Remember. Remember the horrors born of hatred, anti-Semitism and racism, and never again allow them to flourish.”
Sunday’s ceremony came against a backdrop of Israel’s devastating attacks on Gaza.
Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered amid tightened security at Waterloo Square in central Amsterdam, near the museum and the synagogue, waving Palestinian flags and chanting: “Never again is now,” demanding an end of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
The protest leaders emphasized they were against Herzog’s presence, not the museum and what it commemorates.
“For us Jews, these museums are part of our history, of our past,” said Joana Cavaco, an anti-war activist with the Erev Rav Jewish collective, addressing the crowd ahead of the ceremony.
“How is it possible that such a sacred space is being used to normalize genocide today?” she said.
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