Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Sunday made the Netherlands’ first official apology for the wartime persecution of Jews.
“Now the last survivors are still with us, I apologize today in the name of the government for what the authorities did at that time,” Rutte said.
He was giving an address in Amsterdam in memory of victims of the Holocaust, on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Only 38,000 of the 140,000 Jews who lived in the Netherlands survived World War II, but no government apology had been offered for the role the authorities played.
The question of an apology was raised in 2012, when Rutte was also prime minister.
He said then that not enough information was available about government action during the war and there was “not broad enough support” for an official apology.
In 1995, Queen Beatrix said in a speech to the Israeli parliament that the Dutch had done enough to help their Jewish compatriots during the war.
In 2000, then-prime minister Wim Kok apologized for the “icy welcome” Nazi camp survivors received on their return to the Netherlands, which the Nazis occupied from 1940 to 1945.
On Sunday, Rutte went further, saying: “Our government institutions did not act as guardians of justice and security. Too many civil servants carried out the orders of the occupiers.”
“The bitter consequences of the drawing up of registers [of Jews] and of the expulsions have not been adequately recognized, nor recognized in time,” he added.
“On the whole, it was too little, too late. Too little protection. Too little help. Too little recognition,” he said.
“Seventy-five years after Auschwitz, anti-Semitism is still amongst us. That’s exactly why we fully recognize what happened and say it out loud,” Rutte said.
A number of Holocaust survivors were present at the ceremony to hear Rutte’s apology.
“I lost everything during the war,” Zoni Weisz told Dutch broadcaster NOS.
Weisz, who was a child during the war, lost his parents, brother and sisters, all of whom perished in the Nazi death camps.
“They cannot have died in vain,” the 82-year-old said. “In this respect, it is important that apologies be made. And for myself, I accepted them.
“A pity we had to wait 75 years,” he added.
Holocaust survivors yesterday gathered in Auschwitz to mark 75 years since Soviet troops liberated the camp, while world leaders held a somber remembrance ceremony in Jerusalem on Thursday last week.
More than 1.1 million people, mainly Jews, were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
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