Worthy Christian News > World News > Netherlands Marks 80 Years Of Post-War Freedom Amid Anxiety (Worthy News In-Depth)

Netherlands Marks 80 Years Of Post-War Freedom Amid Anxiety (Worthy News In-Depth)

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent, Worthy News reporting from the Netherlands

AMSTERDAM (Worthy News) – The Netherlands marked 80 years since the end of World War II on Monday with parades, festivals, communal meals, and speeches amid anxiety about the future and several anti-Israel protests.

The 80th Liberation Day was meant to mark the end of the Nazi occupation of the country from 1940-1945, when nearly 250,000 Dutch citizens died, many of them Jews.

Those protesting against what they call “Israel’s genocide in Gaza” said May 5 was a good moment to demand attention for Palestinians living in Gaza, despite criticism about the timing.

Protesters held an 80-meter-long (262 feet) “red line” made of fabric, saying Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof leads “a cabinet that refuses to draw a red line against the large-scale violence committed by Israel, despite overwhelming evidence of genocide against the Palestinian people.”

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has not established that genocide has been committed but said Israel “must do everything within its power to prevent genocidal acts against Gazans.”

Demonstrators distributed “red cards” among spectators to hold them up when Schoof lit the liberation flame at the Liberation Festival in the central city of Wageningen, which Poland’s prime minister attended.

Similar protests happened the previous day when the Netherlands remembered those who died in the war, including 102,000 Dutch Jews who perished mainly in Nazi death camps such as Auschwitz and Sobibor.

MANY KILLED

Experts say that number represents about 75 percent of the pre-war Jewish population in the Netherlands, which was around 140,000.

The Dutch Jewish community suffered one of the highest death rates in Western Europe during the Holocaust, also known as the Shoah.

At Sunday’s National Remembrance of the Dead ceremony at Dam Square in Amsterdam, Prime Minister Dick Schoof commemorated them and other victims of the Second World War including his grandfather.

Visibly moved, the prime minister shared the story of his ancestor’s resistance work, for which the Germans executed him due to his involvement in building an extensive illegal telephone network.

“One of the people we remember today is my grandfather, Wim Pommerel, my mother’s father. He worked at the Provincial Electricity Company of North Holland,” Schoof recalled on a chilly day.

“Together with his son, my uncle Cor, he was involved in constructing a large illegal network of telephone lines. Just before the liberation, my grandfather was executed by the Germans in Limmen as retaliation for this resistance work,” the prime minister said.

“For a long time, we as a family knew very little about this,” Schoof added. “But in recent years, we’ve been receiving more and more bits of information about what happened back then and what role my grandfather played. Only now. Because even in the Pommerel household, and later in the Schoof household, it was not spoken about.”

STILL GRIEF

Schoof revealed that his grandmother “never got over the grief and could not talk about it.” Yet, “It was my mother who, despite her own sorrow, told us about him,” he said.

However, now, more than eight decades later, the prime minister warned that people are losing sight of each other “in a world full of war” and that compassion is disappearing—even in the Netherlands.

“In the darkest moments, we hear the echo from the past,” Schoof continued. “On this day, during the two minutes of silence, that echo sounds especially loud. When we think of all those who were murdered for who they were. Who died of hunger or exhaustion. Or who fought for peace and freedom. Our peace and freedom.”

The commemoration also honored those who died in armed conflicts and peace operations since World War Two ranging from the Dutch failed attempt to keep control over what is now known as Indonesia to other wars.

Yet police detained several pro-Palestine protesters as they interrupted the commemoration. A spokesperson of the organizing National Committee for 4 and 5 May said they were pleased that the demonstrators did not interrupt the two minutes of silence for the victims.

Dutch King Willem-Alexander and his wife, Queen Maxima, were among those laying a wreath for victims during the Amsterdam ceremony attended by thousands.

Yet State Secretary Vincent Karremans said society is hardening and expresses concern: “We must be careful not to let our National Remembrance fade.”

ECHO HEARD

Schoof stressed this “echo” calls on us—eighty years after the liberation—to keep remembering. “And to reflect on what this means for us, here and now. In our own lives. In our own choices. In all the big and small acts of humanity.”

In The Hague, the commemoration honored the Hague-based lesbian resistance women Ru Paré and Do Versteegh, who saved the lives of 52 Jewish children during World War Two.

Churches have also been involved in saving many Jewish lives, including royal-decorated journalist Phia Baruch, whose mother died in the Holocaust. “I will always remember what the church did and the farmer’s family where I could hide,” the Jewish woman told Worthy News.

When freedom finally arrived in the Netherlands, hungry three-year-old Aafje van Kampen was among the first to welcome the Allied soldiers.

She had survived what became known as the Hunger Winter. “I still recall a boy eating a small white loaf of bread with cheese. Then I realized how hungry I had been.”

She had been standing in line for potato soup. “The potatoes hadn’t been washed properly, and the sand would crunch on the bottom of the plate. Yet I said. ‘Tastes good, huh grandma?’ And I can still hear my grandmother saying, ‘Oh dear, that child.’ Because she had eaten very well before the war, of course, but I didn’t experience that time. I didn’t live through that time.”

While freedom and eventually more prosperity came to the Netherlands, the 84-year-old artist Aafje van Kampen is concerned about the future. “I think we are very naive in the Netherlands. Looking to Russia and the war in Ukraine, I sometimes fear that war will come to this part of Europe too.”

However her colorful paintings, which Van Kampen has exhibited, reflects her faith and believe in freedom which she suggests will prevail.

Photo: Dutch Prime Minister spoke at the May 4 commemoration at Amsterdam’s Dam Square. By Stefan J. Bos for Worthy News