Being Dutch, I also make a point of observing the Remembrance of the Dead of the Second World War in the Netherlands. This evening at 8pm, wreaths will be lain by King Willem Alexander at the National Memorial in Dam Square in Amsterdam, with a heavy focus on the victims of the Holocaust.
Of the 8.7 million people who were living in the Netherlands in 1939, 110,000 were killed in the gas chambers of the Nazi concentration camps. That equates to 1% of the population at the time. Why were they killed? Mostly because they were Jewish.
May 5th in Holland, incidentally, is Liberation Day, when the commander of the occupaying Nazi German forces surrendered to the Dutch authorities, ending 5 years of brutal occupation.
This is a memorial at Camp Westerbork from where thousands of Dutch Jews were deported to Auschwitz and other extermination camps during WW2.One of them was a 14-year old girl called Anne Frank.
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