Amsterdam mayor apologizes for the city’s role in the Holocaust

Eighty years after the end of World War II, mayor Femke Halsema from Amsterdam on Thursday apologized for the city’s role in the persecution of its Jewish population during the Holocaust, in a rare recognition of the collective moral failure by the city leader.

She said, “The Amsterdam government, when it was important, was not heroic, not designed and not compassionate,” she said. “It was terrible for its Jewish population.”

Mrs. Halceima issued an apology in a speech at a celebration of the Holocaust in Hollande Chopurg, a theater that turned into the Nazis to a major deportation center that has been sent many Jews in Amsterdam to focus camps in the Netherlands and other parts of Europe.

Before the Holocaust, Amsterdam, the Dutch capital, had 80,000 Jewish population. With the help of local officials, the Nazis deported and killed more than 60,000 of them.

Ms. Halceima said: “Officials and officials were not only cold and formal, but were willing to cooperate with the occupier.” “This was an indispensable step in isolation, humiliation, deportation, abolition of humanity and killing 60,000 Jews in Amsterdam.”

The city’s government cooperated with the Nazis at multiple levels; Municipal officials have set the place where the Jews lived and helped local police officers deport their citizens.

Ms. Halceima said: “The anti -Semitism has not been brought to the Netherlands by the German occupier, and it has not yet disappeared. There was always hatred against the Jews – in this city as well – and it is still there.”

Mrs. Halssima announced that the city will invest 25 million euros (about 28.5 million dollars) to enhance Jewish life and see Judaism in the city. A new committee of six people will decide how to spend this money.

“I didn’t expect it,” said Kirin Hersh, a council member in Amsterdam. “Many are unknown to Judaism, and the history of Amsterdam,” added Ms. Hersh, a Jew, added.

Through the Netherlands, the Nazis deported 75 percent of the country’s Jewish population to detention camps during World War II, the highest percentage in Western Europe. Most of them lived in Amsterdam. The city’s transportation and other agencies helped remove 102,000 Jews and 220 Roman people, also known as ROMA and Sinti, from Amsterdam.

“You cannot go back, you cannot back down from what the municipality did,” said Ms. Hirsch. But she added, “Getting an apology is important to me. In this sense, the words are important to me.”

The official apology of the city comes five years after former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Ritti apologized on behalf of the government for not protecting the Jewish citizens in the country during World War II.

“With the last of the remaining survivors between us, I apologize on behalf of the government for the government’s actions at that time,” Mr. Root said in a memorial in 2020.

As a whole, the country has spent the past few years calculating the dark classes of its past. In 2023, King William Alexander I apologize for the role of his country in the slave tradeA rare direct apology for historical injustice by a seated European king. Mr. Root I apologize on behalf of the government Months.

In 2022, Mr. Roti also apologized to the people of Indonesia for the institutional violence of the Dutch army during the Indonesian independence war, which began in 1945. In 2022, the Dutch Defense Minister apologized for the role of the Netherlands in 1995 The massacre of about 8,000 Muslim men and children In the Bosnian town of Serbrinka.